Ou Zhou gong lue (2018) Reviews

• The film story itself is a "covert operation" against CIA and audiences

  hilaryswank20112018-09-04

  This is part of Dir. Jingle Ma's Raiders trilogy. It includes its preceding films such as Tokyo Raiders (2000) and Seoul Raiders (2005). Europe Raiders (2018) is typical Mainland-China-Hong Kong cooperated blockbuster film of this year. And it's quite successful in its film technics and anti-CIA political effect. It is far from 007-like spy movies, and also it is not laughable like spy comedy of Leslie Nielsen, Spy Hard (1996). Its film story itself is a "covert operation" against CIA and audiences. This film's main feature is that its story telling is a kind of covert operation which done by "actors" in the film story. And CIA is the only loser at the end. This franchise takes intelligence covert operation as its theme and it has competitive skills and quality of filmmaking standard which are seen in the most of Hollywood films. Namely it should not be simply seen as a "thriller" to avid any vagueness and generarization that quite preventing audiences from straightly understanding the main narrative action, "intelligence agencies' covert operation". However, Europe Raiders (2018) is not like 007-like traditional spy action thriller. Its aim is to make a CIA parody with cynicism. As the result, it became a serious parody. The story is quite complicated due to its dual dramatic story telling structure. Temporary employed CIA agents, bounty hunters Lin Zaifeng (played by the most famous Hong Kong star Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and his girl friend Ms. Wang (played by Tiffany Yan Tang) have to deal with enemy of CIA in Italy, the pseudo-antagonist, hacker, Italian mafia's manipulator Sophie (played by Du Juan) who threatening CIA for the revenge of her tortured father, an engineer of the PRISM-like spying system "Hand of God" (MacGuffin), and she wants to get her brother Rocky (played by Kris Wu) released from CIA's secret prison. After Lin Zaifeng and Ms.Wang successfully release Sophie's brother Rocky to find the target, then Sophie secretly cooperates with Lin Zaifeng and Ms. Wang to deceive CIA by acting a battle in a Nuclear manufacturing plant. At the end, we can find that true antagonist is CIA, not others. The con is that involvement of assassins from European intelligence agency lacks its logical explanation of any kind in cinematic way. The plotting is not adequate that these assassins are just additional props by "Hands of God". A kind of miracle device to complicate the battle among CIA, the hacker and bounty hunters. Audicene could have a bias in the first half of this film as pro CIA action thriller with quite smooth proceeding of events, one after another. On the contrary, from the car chase sequence in high way in which bounty hunters pick up Sophie's brother Rocky, the drama is clearly sifted into a sever battle with CIA. After the Alien 3 (1992)-like pseudo-ending of the confrontation among assassins, Sophie and bounty hunters, the story reveals its true narrative aspect that true winner is bounty hunters, not CIA at all because everything is a show cheating on CIA. The structure of story telling of this film is dual. The story telling has developed from complicated pseudo conflict among CIA against hacker Sophie to true conflict between bounty hunters and CIA. This is a dialectic of story telling. About the specialty of cinematic solution, basically all of technical solutions are already familiar to audiences. However, it should refer to the black and white solution of the subject in the frame shapes a colourful conflict with coloured background. For instance, when Lin Zaifeng falling in to the fake nuclear fuel furnace, we can see the similar framing with Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley falling into furnace in Alien 3 (1992). On the contrary it is more digitally differentiated in colour resolution. Technically it is actually progressed from that. This is a quarity work as an anti-CIA parody for China. Politically mature audiences can accept its as some kind of alternative to 007 spy movies in the past. Moreover its filmmaking techniques are far exceeding Taiwanese filmmakers in all aspects at present. A successful Mainland-Hong Kong film cooperation!

• A successful return to classic Hong Kong action-thrillers of the eighties and nineties

  kluseba2018-08-23

  Europe Raiders is a quite entertaining action-thriller with strong martial arts sequences that comes around with a major and quite efficient twist in its surprising conclusion. The movie revolves around an invention that makes it possible to track down terrorists around the world. This tool has however been misused by the Central Intelligence Agency and its inventor died in grief and regret. Many years later, the inventor's very intelligent daughter seeks vengeance and manages to steal a part of the invention. The inventor's former bodyguard and friend cooperates with his female colleague and love interest in order to bring the tool back for the Central Intelligence Agency. To achieve this goal, the duo must cooperate with the inventor's imprisoned son whose goals are quite shady. Quite soon, a family drama unfolds and leads to a brutal showdown. There are many positive elements about this movie that reminds me of the glorious days of Hong Kong cinema in the late eighties and early nineties. First of all, the film has fluid pace and a perfect length. Secondly, the dynamic martial arts elements are performed in a very grounded way which give the movie a more realistic touch than similar efforts. Thirdly, the characters are quite interesting as one cares for the gentle yet determined bodyguard and his quirky yet charming colleague but also for the desperate daughter and mysterious son of the sympathetic inventor. Fourthly, the locations are quite interesting as the film takes place in numerous beautiful cities in Italy. Fifthly and most importantly, the film comes around with a twist that I didn't see coming but that made sense to me and ended the film on a very high note. A few elements need to be criticized as well. There are too many artificially flavored special effects in this film. This still looks cool in the opening sequence that could come from the James Bond franchise but the final showdown ressembles a video game rather than an actual movie. The depiction of the Central Intelligence Agency members and their objectives remain relatively shallow as they are quickly stigmatized as bad guys without adding any depth to it. The plot seemed to be somewhat shallow until the final twist turned it around in a most positive way. In the end, I can recommend the movie to those who like and miss Hong Kong action-thrillers of the eighties and nineties. Europe Raiders gives you everything you need from breathtaking fights over intriguing characters to a story with a major twist. Tony Leung convinces as cool protagonist while Tang Yan, who might have her breakthrough with this role, complements him with breathtaking charm and beauty. Ignore the negative reviews and enjoy the wild ride.

• A laughably bad movie

  maclock2018-08-22

  Unless you're a pre-pubescent Chinese boy, you shouldn't bother watching Europe Raiders. Production values are pretty bad in spots and it's an awfully tacky film over all. This one is a serious pass, my friends. Not recommended.

• A mediocre foray into the "Raiders" franchise...

  paul_haakonsen2019-01-15

  I was somewhat surprised to find a third movie in the "Raiders" series, especially because I hadn't even heard about it. I found it, picked it up and had to watch it regardless. I didn't even read the synopsis for the movie. The fact that it was a Hong Kong movie and in the "Raiders" series was more than enough. However, this 2018 addition to the franchise wasn't quite as interesting as the previous movies. That being said, I have to say that the movie is still enjoyable and watchable, it just wasn't as solid a movie entertainmentwise and storywise as the previous movies were. One of the better things in the movie was the amount of action that there was in the movie, and it was nicely executed on the screen. But of course the driving force here was Tony Chiu-Wai Leung in the lead role. I was thrilled to see JeeJa Yanin's name on the opening credits, but her role was so small it was almost non-existing. And that was a disappointment. The storyline in "Europe Raiders" (aka "Ou Zhou Gong Lue") was a little bit too random. It felt like director and writer Jingle Ma was just making things up as the shooting of the movie progressed. There wasn't a continual red thread throughout the movie, and at times it just felt like I was watching random scenes put in the movie just because it was possible to do so. The movie did have a fairly good cast with some familiar names and faces on the cast list, especially for a seasoned Asian cinema fanatic such as myself. So if you like Asian cinema, you might actually want to check out the cast list for this movie. All in all, "Europe Raiders" is a movie that you watch once and never again, because it just failed to have the same charm, appeal and contents as the previous two movies in the franchise. An average, albeit mediocre, movie that just failed to be outstanding.

• It seems like great outside, but it's not inside.

  silvermistvio2018-11-12

  Most of the reviews on this film are describing that this film is a totally bad. Although I hate to say it, but I must admit that it's kind of bad a little bit. When I chose to watch this one, the reason why was because of Kris Wu. After some minutes passed, I'd say it's kind of boring. Effects are pretty good, but the story needs to be better. They should have done better job. The other thing I'd to say is the audio. Maybe it's just me. The one I got is pretty bad. The audio is totally mixed. It has Cantonese, English, Italian and Klingon. I mean not everyone can understand those languages. And also, I can't. So, I searched for subtitle, but there's nothing. So, I had to watch it from another source, a Chinese website. Thank Buddha that they use Chinese language (Mandarin for voice and Chinese subtitle) at least. So, I could watch it. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to watch it. This is the worst thing about this film. The film markers should do it in Mandarin because almost every Chinese understands. If they want to do it in other languages, they should have subtitle built-in. The other thing I'd like to say is about a scene. In nearly end scene, there's a scene where Rocky's father appeared on the screen. That scene reminds me of Kingsman movie's head exploding scene. And also in a kissing scene of Lin Zai Feng and Wang Chao Ying, the background music is a copied from Indian movie. So, I'd say they might have copied a little. Although this film isn't that good, there's something we could all learn. It is that not everything we see is all. There might be some story about it. So that, we can be careful. Overall, if they could improve the story, yeah, it'd be better than this.