Operation Red Sea Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Operation Red Sea Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 24, 2018

Operation Mekong purported to provide a “ripped from the headlines” look at a modern day pirate escapade that led to an international brouhaha. As I mentioned in our Operation Mekong Blu-ray review, while the film may indeed have been based on a real life incident, the “headlines” the film referenced were probably more known to Chinese “readers” than to anyone in the West. As I also discussed in that review, director Dante Lam seemed less interested in offering a quasi-documentarian approach, and instead used a real life skirmish to set up a series of viscerally exciting action adventure set pieces. While it may not have presented “the facts and only the facts”, Operation Mekong scored well at the Chinese box office, and so it was probably a foregone conclusion that there would be more Operations to follow. Operation Red Sea once again purports to lift a relatively recent incident involving Somali pirates and port it into a cinematic treatment, but much as with its progenitor, any supposed relation to actual history is probably going to be gleaned almost exclusively by Chinese audiences, if even by them, since this film seems even less tethered to whatever really happened than Operation Mekong, and instead seems designed almost solely to provide opportunities for Lam and his team to blow things up.

Much as with Operation Mekong, Operation Red Sea begins with a slam bang sequence involving pirates boarding a cargo ship. Lam goes for the gusto even more than he did in the previous film, though, with a longer and more involved segment that introduces a special ops aggregation called the Jiaolong Assault Team, which is indeed evidently based on a real life Chinese force that is part of the so-called People’s Liberation Army. Within what looks like mere seconds of pirates boarding a Chinese vessel, the Jiaolong Assault Team is there in response, having already boarded the same vessel, while also surrounding it with a number of backup personnel, including snipers in a helicopter. It’s a nicely conceived opening, even if it resorts to flat out clichés like a bullet emerging in slow motion from an assault rifle and wending its way gracefully into its target’s skull (a conceit that Lam returns to later in the film). (The closing credits include a reference to IMAX 3D, so I’m assuming the film was exhibited in 3D in some markets, something which may account for these “in your face” moments, though it’s only offered in a “flat” presentation on this domestic Blu-ray.)

The opening fracas does free the captive crew, but results in a serious injury to one of the team, which leads to some brief agonizing by the command staff, in what might be seen as an attempt to deliver some actual human emotion to the proceedings, something that was sorely missing in Operation Mekong. The film then segues to Casablanca and introduces crusading journalist (as I’ve mentioned in another recent review, is there any other kind of journalist in a film like this?) Xia Nan (Hai Qing) who kind of hilariously has a big showdown with her editor where she tells him she came to work for this small independent news organization because she was sick of how the big league places she had worked for earlier skewed the “news” to their liking. What makes this statement so unintentionally humorous is that both Operation Mekong and Operation Red Sea are so obviously close to being propaganda themselves, designed expressly to elicit nationalist pride in Chinese audiences.

Xia is hot on the trail of stolen yellowcake (not a Duncan Hines mix, for those who may be wondering), and that leads to the main focus of the film, with the expected dastardly terrorists trying to manufacture a dirty bomb. What’s kind of odd in this particular formulation is the rather random assortment of “fictionalized” elements that intrude in the story, including having Yemen become Yewaire. Xia’s presence is also increasingly ludicrous, as she matriculates from damsel in distress to gun toting avenger. By the time a team of operatives is wingsuiting into a desert hideaway to take out the bad guys, any connection to how things really work in military operations has, well, flown the coop.

Lam is obviously a very skilled action director, and he provides Operation Red Sea with all sorts of huge explosions, gun fights and other adventure staples. But Operation Red Sea still feels unnecessarily bloated (it clocks in at well over two hours), and never really connects emotionally, much like its predecessor, despite some faltering attempts to inject a bit of heart into otherwise adrenaline pumping moments. This film may strike some Westerners as even more screed like than Operation Mekong, and citizens of the good old United States of America may be raising their collective eyebrows in a brief exchange shown over the closing credits.

Operation Red Sea Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Operation Red Sea is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. The IMDb lists a variety of cameras used to digitally capture the imagery, with source resolutions of up to 6K finished at a 2K DI. While this is a generally very nice looking transfer, it is arguably a bit softer looking than Operation Mekong, and some of the greenscreen and/or other CGI material sometimes doesn't offer superb levels of detail (pay attention to some of the ships in the ocean in some of the early going for good examples). Lam utilizes quite a bit of handheld framings here, and "jiggly cam" can tend to keep fine detail levels at bay with all of the bouncing and reframings employed. That said, when the camera is stationary and close-ups are utilized, fine detail levels are often very appealing. The palette is rather orange looking a lot of the time, giving some of the desert sequences a slightly artificial look. Once again on a Well Go USA Blu-ray release, there's some noticeable banding that shows up from time to time Keep your eyes peeled at around 12:33 as the camera pans down from the sky for one clear example, which I've tried to show in screenshot 19 where you can hopefully make out some striations, though to be fair this recurrent issue seems to be rather "display sensitive" in terms of how visible it is.

Operation Red Sea Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Operation Red Sea features an appropriately hyperbolic DTS:X mix in the original Mandarin (kind of interestingly, the closing credits mention Dolby Atmos, and I always wonder how these "changes" in audio codecs come to be as Blu-ray releases are planned). From the first second of this film, with an overhead shot of the Chinese freighter about to be attacked by pirates, there are clear washes of surround activity, including a glut of midair placement of various effects. The exciting opening sequence offers a nonstop array of panning and forceful LFE as the response to the pirates proceeds, and Lam, as is his wont, peppers the film with big action sequences every few minutes, all of which provide substantial audio immersion. While the film is ostensibly in Mandarin, there are a few scattered moments of English spoken (sometimes fairly heavily accented). All elements, from dialogue and effects to score, are offered with sterling fidelity and smart prioritization, even in some of the noisiest battle scenes.

Operation Red Sea Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes

  Training (1080p; 2:12)

  Phone Call (1080p; 2:43)

  Yellowcake (1080p; 1:04)

  Bracelet (1080p; 1:00)

  Tank (1080p; 00:59)

  Bella's House (1080p; 3:28)

  Kulee Town (1080p; 1:07)

  Al Hafed Port (1080p; 00:53)

• Teaser (1080p; 1:23)


• Trailer A (1080p; 1:46)


• Trailer B (1080p; 1:30)


• U.S. Trailer (1080p; 1:34)

Operation Red Sea Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

According to some online data, Operation Red Sea handily outgrossed a little film called Black Panther for several weeks running in its native country, though I have to wonder how much the film will appeal to non-Chinese audiences who may be relatively immune to its at times jingoistic fervor. Even those who don't care one whit (one way or the other) about the film's politics may get a jolt out of some of the viscerally exciting action elements, however. Technical merits (especially audio) are generally solid, and with caveats noted, Operation Red Sea comes Recommended.