Runtime: 122 minutes
Directed by: Tony Chan
Starring: Xiaoming Huang,
Jiang Du, Zhuo Tan, Zi Yang, Hao Ou
From: Several different
Chinese companies
Only
once in awhile do Chinese movies come over to my general area in
Florida and it's only on rare occasions do I check them out. However, it
fit my schedule yesterday to take a little drive and see this, after
eating at a Walk-On's Bistreaux & Bar (yes, it is a sports bar with a
Louisiana theme; I highly recommend it) for the first time.
China has leaned even harder into creating extravaganzas that are comparable to Hollywood; this concerns firefighters trying to contain a blaze at an oil refinery-I've heard it compared as a combo of Roland Emmerich and Peter Berg... sure, I can go with that. Due to convenient circumstances, if the firefighters are not successful, then the large city they are in and the surrounding area will all be pretty F'ed. Of course this is a melodrama as not only is there a boy w/ asthma who loses his inhaler, but the boy's mom has to help a random couple and deliver them to a hospital amongst all the chaos of everyone evacuating because that woman is going into labor.
Someone I know on a messageboard who lives in Southeast Asia states that too many films from mainland China engage in propaganda and another person stated that was the case with this picture, as the foreigners are naturally the ones who caused the catastrophe in the first place with their stupidity and the only Chinese person you see who wasn't honorable and brave was the bureaucrat... I can acknowledge that while also saying this did not bother me too much in this case. This is a silly spectacle where more focus was placed on gnarly explosions and carnage than fleshing out the characters... but that is what Hollywood commonly does also.
I'll say this was fine overall. While cliché and having the expected heroic sacrifices and questionable moments of logic (will fire really rush out of a window as soon as you break it?) I still managed to be entertained by this nonsense that had the expected heroic sacrifices and s*** blowing up real good. It also reminds me that one day I should check out Only the Brave and shame on me for not watching it theatrically almost two years ago.
China has leaned even harder into creating extravaganzas that are comparable to Hollywood; this concerns firefighters trying to contain a blaze at an oil refinery-I've heard it compared as a combo of Roland Emmerich and Peter Berg... sure, I can go with that. Due to convenient circumstances, if the firefighters are not successful, then the large city they are in and the surrounding area will all be pretty F'ed. Of course this is a melodrama as not only is there a boy w/ asthma who loses his inhaler, but the boy's mom has to help a random couple and deliver them to a hospital amongst all the chaos of everyone evacuating because that woman is going into labor.
Someone I know on a messageboard who lives in Southeast Asia states that too many films from mainland China engage in propaganda and another person stated that was the case with this picture, as the foreigners are naturally the ones who caused the catastrophe in the first place with their stupidity and the only Chinese person you see who wasn't honorable and brave was the bureaucrat... I can acknowledge that while also saying this did not bother me too much in this case. This is a silly spectacle where more focus was placed on gnarly explosions and carnage than fleshing out the characters... but that is what Hollywood commonly does also.
I'll say this was fine overall. While cliché and having the expected heroic sacrifices and questionable moments of logic (will fire really rush out of a window as soon as you break it?) I still managed to be entertained by this nonsense that had the expected heroic sacrifices and s*** blowing up real good. It also reminds me that one day I should check out Only the Brave and shame on me for not watching it theatrically almost two years ago.
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