Comment on Wolf Warrior 2

I added my two cents to the cinema hit from China in Quora.

Some go to the movies to be intellectually stimulated, some just for the entertainment. Belonging to the latter category, I found WW2 quite entertaining.

The movie opens with a 007 like action, except all taking place under water—a new twist. Near the beginning of the movie, the hero got into a drinking contest with a big burly black guy. All the beer they can chug-a-lug wouldn’t do the job, so then the hero whips out bottles of Mao Tai. Down the hatch goes the white lightening and sure enough, down goes the black guy. Since that free product placement, sales of Mao Tai in China have gone through the roof.

As for tidbits that could be considered as propaganda:

1. As US navy was leaving the coast of the embattled African country, the PLAN was streaming toward the shore to rescue the Chinese workers in factories built by Chinese companies.
2. There was a tag line that goes something like this: A PRC passport won’t get you to anywhere you want to go, but will bring you back from wherever you might be.
3. The government and the rebels stopped shooting to let the Chinese convoy pass because “they are our friends and we will need them after the fight is over.”

A farfetched coincidence is that the hero and the numero uno bad guy had a personal vendetta involving the loss the love of the hero’s life. So the hero is consoled by getting the beautiful heroine at the end and he gets to beat the sadistic bad guy, who happens to be an American mercenary, to death.

So after the Chinese expats and their fellow African workers were safely on board the Chinese naval ships, both sides of the revolution presumably went back to fighting happily ever after.

What’s not to like in a movie like that?