Operation Mekong

[Drunk Monk]

So there's the emerging genre of PRC film that's military propagandist fodder.  The Wolf Warrior franchise is of this ilk.  The Operation franchise is already two deep. Mekong is #1.  I wish I had seen this on the big screen because it's massively cinematic.  Shot in the jungles of Thailand, Laos & Myanmar, it's lots of lush drone footage of deep jungle, 3rd world architecture, lots of cars, tactical vans, and copters.  It's got this rhythm of 10-15 mins of plot to build tension, then some 10 mins of awesome ultravi.  The ultiravi is good stuff - some big hardware, real explosions and car crashes, digital blood puffs, sanguinosity, heroes who are fine with torturing the crap out of the villains, a coked-out kingpin that rivals Scarface, English so awkward you need subtitles (helps if you can distinguish between Mandarin, Thai, Lao & Burmese), gun hardware porn, Dingo the wonder dog and his team of Greek Gods, just enough surprises to keep me engaged, and plenty of breaks with that plot stuff where I could refresh my refreshments. The overall plot is dumb and predictable - coked-out drug kingpinds are bad, mmkay? - but really gorgeous on a cinematic level.  What they can do with drones nowadays, my oh my.  It's long tho - 2.5 hours plus.  It if was just the scenery and the ultravi, it might be half as long and twice as good.  

DOOM Approved. Netflixer