Notable Cast: Zhang
Hanyu, Eddie Peng, Carl Ng, Ken Lo, Pawarith Monkolpisit, Jonathan Wu
Many of the early trailers for Operation Mekong made the film look something like a military
action thriller, powered by a dramatic ‘based on true events’ plot, and packed
with big name stars throwing their best performances to earn awards. In many
ways, yes, this is the film you are going to see with Operation Mekong. It’s certainly all of those things to an extent.
However, that’s not all it is either. There was a certain expectation that went
with the tone of the trailers that seemed to mix Platoon with a more modern day Lone
Survivor spin and Operation Mekong
is a bit more than that…and a bit less. Dante Lam’s latest action extravaganza
is more John Woo and less Oliver Stone in its approach to the story, blending
in high octane block buster action sequences with military dramatic touches. So
it is less, in the idea of an
impactful and emotional punch categories, but it is certainly more in the insane cheesy action
categories. Operation Mekong
ultimately comes off as a slightly mixed effort in its writing and characters,
but it makes up for a lot of its larger flaws by being skull shattering
action packed and tense. When it’s boiled down, this is really the film I
should have expected and I still enjoyed the hell out of it, even if it doesn’t
quite match the dramatic heights that Dante Lam has reached in previous films.