A Low budget Wolf Warrior
Poor old Vincent Zhao he just can’t catch a break, Zhao started his career promisingly filling in the shoes of Jet Li’s Wong Few Hung and starring in a string of pretty decent films like Tsui Hark’s The Blade and Cory Yuen’s Fong Sai Yuk. His more recent stints sadly regulated him to the realm of web films reprising in his most popular role as Wong Fei Hung in Unity of Heroes and Warrior of the Nation. 2021 sees him both starring and directing Counterattack which is described as a military film in the same vein as Operation Red Sea and Wolf Warrior.
Let’s cut to the chase Counterattack is a pretty bad, the plot is so paper thin filled with insanely bad dialogue and poorly implemented set pieces.
The film is filled with many questionable moments like its opening where we see Vincent Zhao donning a jet pack pursuing a speed boat all the while holding a sniper rifle ready to assassinate the person on board. First of there’s no way he can keep a steady aim let alone hold the rifle scoped in, secondly any element of stealth is removed and lastly why shot such a scene when you clearly don’t have the budget in shooting convincing CGI.
The mid section we have Lu and Bai’s romantic relationship but its done with this haphazard montage where it then zones in onto a clock face where the dials are spinning to indicate time lapsing. Not only is all this cheesy but removes any urgency that the film is suppose to have. Within there bonding section Lu teaches Mo how to use a sniper rifle and in a ridiculously short time she is a crack shot. There is a lot of misplaced comedy and Vincent Zhao never feels comfortable with the comedy.
Surprisingly Zhao gives the foreign actors a lot of screen time, the gesture is commendable but not necessarily a good thing considering how poorly written and acted these moments are. Shouldering most of the acting chops is China based foreign actor Diego Dati best known in Jackie Chan’s Vanguard. Zhao himself does try hard but maybe a bit too hard in channeling Wu Jing or even Donnie Yen but he fails to surround his performance with a good script or direction.
I would also like to know why the film is set in a fictional South East Asian country everyone speaks woefully bad English instead of their native tongue. Bare in mind almost none of the actors are native English speakers so you have these awful dialogue sections in English and at times it's incomprehensible.
So let’s talk about the action which they are plentiful but sadly lacking any real punch to them. As mentioned before the opening is an assassination attempt that goes awry and transitions to a shootout but its shot in a very boring manner. Then we have 2 chase scenes through the jungle, one set during the day and one during the night but neither chase provide any intensity or real danger. Midway we get our real fight scene between China based martial artist Myra (From the Scott Adkins film Abduction), her character is pretty bland and have no real threat but the audience can see that she is a very competent martial artist. There fight is framed well and possess some nice impact but it is rather short lived, it is very reminiscent of the Wu Jing v Scott Adkins fight from Wolf Warrior. As the film neared the end I was concerned that they were going to end on a whimper, with of very by the numbers infiltration scene but thankfully we do end with a fight scene that is rather ill fitting to the scene but at least we end with a fight scene. The fight does borrow heavily from Donnie Yen vs Wu Jing fight from SPL, in which both dagger wielding combatants size and test each other out with strikes and slashes. Its a decent fight scene but is occasionally ruined by some odd wire gags. I’m glad to see Zhao managing to shed his more wushu styling and embrace a more popular MMA technique employing grappling into the mix which feels more fitting to a modern setting.
As negative as I was towards the film I feel there is minor enjoyment to be had. I’m a sucker for Vincent Zhao films so I can deem mild enjoyment but to everyone else they can avoid this.
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