Directed By Scott Waugh

Starring – Jackie Chan, John Cena, Pilou Asbaek

The Plot – Two ex-special forces soldiers (Chan, Cena) must escort a group of civilians along Baghdad’s “Highway of Death” to the safety of the Green Zone.

This film is currently not rated

HIDDEN STRIKE – OFFICIAL TRAILER – YouTube

POSITIVES

In the 90’s, action films paired any two megastars together in the hopes of box office gold, and with the strange but dynamic team-up of Jackie Chan and John Cena, the genre has once more brought together these polar opposites from varying generations, all for a rip-roaring series of interactions between them. Cena once more brings his every man charm and imposing physique to a character with no shortage of blossoming charisma, and Chan supplants a hard-edged resiliency and ageless effort to his bountiful physicality, which even after thirty years in cinema still looks as freshly youthful as ever before. When the two characters are brought together with around an hour left in the movie, it enhances the story’s intrigue, even with the material feeling as redundant and derivative as possible, with surprisingly naturalistic chemistry between the dazzling duo that is fun to watch whether they’re bumping fists or colliding in a claustrophobic boiler room. On that aspect, the fight sequences, full of rapid velocity and razor sharp choreography, are easily the single best aspect of the film, for my money, with Chan and Cena vividly conveying what each of them bring to the table of action installment opportunities. Even more affording to their cause is the enhanced ambition of the editing and cinematography during such time, supplying to the film a rich variation of complex vantage points and precision among cuts that the rest of the film sadly doesn’t contain, giving the experience at least twenty minutes of combined entertainment that offers glimpses of the possibilities that it could’ve had on a better movie.

NEGATIVES

The diminishing returns for Netflix action flicks are aplenty, but until seeing “Hidden Strike”, I never realized how little truly goes into shuffling out these conveyer belt productions that will inevitably be forgotten as quickly as it was to watch one. For starters, the C.G in this film is humiliatingly outdated, with artificial backdrops and foreground explosions that continuously give off an uncanny hue that outlines the whole scene was filmed on a soundstage, especially with actor properties wearing a three-dimensional likeness to everything that persists behind them. This technical snafu carries over to the blandness of the entire script, which had me bored to tears after fifteen minutes of film, then graded on my nerves throughout a predictably familiar outline that quite literally feels like every action film that I’ve ever experienced. The plot is simplistic and explored fully within the first act, the dialogue constantly emits the sentiment that every character has to be a bona fide badass, and the tonal inconsistencies make the interactions feel so unaware of the precedent set by the sometimes strange and sudden events, that they’re never on the same page with the actors portraying what they feel is the integrity of any scene. This makes the comedy of the film feel not only underutilized, for how a majority of the film pertains to stiffly dramatic circumstances, but also unknowingly flat, for the material that the actors are given to push out a diamond. Hell, the only time I legitmately laughed in multiple instances within a minute was the post-credits blooper reel that ended the film, and that in itself is a major statement towards the material. On top of all of this, the pacing of the film, even at 98 minutes of run time is every bit arduous as it is consistently flat, with very little built in the long-term development of the storytelling that keeps the audience even briefly hooked for the duration. This made “Hidden Strike” one of the toughest sits that I’ve experienced so far in 2023, and considering you have two charismatic stars like Chan and Cena fronting the bill, it’s a testament to just how dully derivative the occasion is to override their talents. Aside from the J.C duo, the villain here (Played by Asbaek) isn’t remotely interesting or original in his character outline. Asbaek does the best he can with the awful opportunity presented to him, but it’s a character with the kind of unrealized motivation that makes him even undesirable to storytelling respects, with very little time and exposition paid to his character, besides the screen time he shares with the film’s two stars. Finally, while I feel bad for calling any one person out for their creative efforts, the direction from Scott Waugh is sorely lacking in illustrated urgency, vulnerability, or even appropriate inspiration in the guiding of his ensemble. The latter can be felt the loudest with Cena, in which one second he’s not even remotely mourning the death of a family member, but in the next practically breaking down to tears over the destruction of his truck. This definitely makes it difficult to fully invest in Cena’s character, but more importantly it speaks volumes to the constant disjointment that plagued much of the film’s proceedings, where even a single solitary scene or sequence pays off in palpable integrity.

OVERALL
“Hidden Strike” is the latest addition to the leaning tower of disappointing Netflix returns, which serve as nothing more than a temporary content filler to an already overstuffed app. With tonal obscurity, an underwritten and underutilized antagonist, and literally an uncanny valley of cheaply rendered C.G, this action bromance doesn’t have enough fuel for the proverbial fire to compel audience interests, resulting in 98 minutes of forgettable fluff that truly is better left hidden.

My Grade: 3/10 or F+