Hidden Strike (2023) Movie Review

Jackie Chan is back! After we last saw his touching performance at Ride On last April, now he is back again through his comedic action fight in Hidden Strike .

In this film, Jackie Chan is paired with John Cena, the WWE star we last saw in action in Fast X. What’s the story? Let’s read the synopsis below.

Hidden Strike (2023) Synopsis

In a future not far from the present, oil becomes an important commodity that causes wars that have devastated the Middle East. Clearly visible in multiple views of road signs, roadblocks everywhere, vehicles strewn along the road of death, also where satellite transmissions were blown up.

This is enough to describe how brutal the background of this film is in building its story.

The story centers on a Chinese-owned oil refinery company in Iraq, gets continuous terror and asks for help from a private security contractor.

Luo Feng (Jackie Chan), who used to be a former special forces officer, led the operation with his team to evacuate all the oil refinery workers in the area.

When the evacuation took place, some departed by helicopter and the rest used 8 buses that departed in tandem to the Green Zone.

In order to get to his destination quickly, Luo Feng decided to pass through the Highway of Death which was famous for its awesomeness in taking lives.

Sure enough, not long after a sandstorm hit the bus convoy and made their vision blurry and communication cut off. It was then that a group of people appeared who hijacked the bus and took the head of the oil company hostage to ask for access to the oil they had.

Realizing that the bus has disappeared, Luo Feng and one of the oil company employees, who turns out to be his daughter, who he has not seen for a long time, follow him via helicopter.

But one of the hijackers, Chris Van Horne (John Cena) realized that he had been deceived by his younger brother, who also took part in hijacking the convoy. It turns out that his younger brother works for someone he knows who likes helping Chris in the village, Owen Paddock (Pilou Asbaek).

Owen turns out to have bigger interests that he didn’t know about before. Chris who is a former Marine, now lives in Iraq to teach children in a village that is always short of water.

Chris was then invited to cooperate by Luo Feng to help him save the prisoners who were still being held hostage at the oil company. How will their story end? Did the two succeed in rescuing the hostages still being held at the factory?

Hidden Strike (2023) Movie Review

The setting is reminiscent of Mad Max

Seeing the Hidden Strike poster, Cineverse is immediately reminded of the film Mad Max: Fury Road , which was released in 2015. The use of color is indeed very clear, imitating the film starring Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy.

It turns out that it’s not just the poster, but the feel of the film as a whole. The post-apocalyptic period described is indeed different, Hidden Strike , which is not too far from today, tends to still look a little modern.

In this case, the production design and artistic layout of Hidden Strike are still very far behind compared to Mad Max: Fury Road which looks very detailed and tends to be extreme.

The chemistry between the two is very entertaining

This is not the first time Jackie Chan has teamed up with his co-star. Jackie Chan became known in the Hollywood film scene when he appeared with Chris Tucker in the film Rush Hour in 1998.

The film received a positive response and entered into a box office film which later, due to its success, was continued with Rush Hour 2 (2001) and Rush Hour 3 (2007). While Rush Hour was taking place, Jackie Chan also partnered with Owen Wilson in Shanghai Noon (2000) and Shanghai Knights (2003).

Now, two actors who happen to have the same initials, JC, aka Jackie Chan and John Cena, look very unified, their chemistry blends easily and can make the audience laugh.

Cineverse saw many audiences laughing heartily during the Hidden Strike media screening which was held in Jakarta (10/9). Both the jokes that are made while relaxing or in a serious situation really deserve thumbs up.

Often they have miscommunication related to differences in language and code language when fighting their enemies, making the annoyance between them arise very naturally and not artificially.

John Cena, who originally spoke Mandarin, although not very fluent, was able to enter in certain scenes that spontaneously caused laughter, which was again caused by wrong intonation in pronunciation and wrong interpretation of sentences.

The humor is simple and polished with Jackie Chan’s facial expressions, which are already funny by nature, making many of the scenes they perform come alive.

The classic fighting action is now back again

Once again, we can finally see Jackie Chan’s acrobatic action that many of his fans miss. In Hidden Strike , there is a scene where Jackie Chan fights long enough in the middle of the foam with his enemy.

Foam, which is a chemical for oil extinguishers, is quite difficult, because it has never been done before, and although the action is not very interesting, it needs to be appreciated because the level of difficulty is very high.

Pilou Asbaek who plays the antagonist character is not too optimal in this film. It’s a shame, the screen time is only occasional and the action scenes aren’t interesting at all. Tend to be flat and put more emphasis on this JC duo.

Hidden Strike (2023) Conclusion

Hidden Strike is full of natural humor and action that can be said to be quite decent, although this combination is not as good as the Rush Hour trilogy or the Shanghai duology.

The CGI is very bad and looks rough, the action scenes are not all that interesting to watch and the antagonists are too flat and mediocre. Even so, this duet looks promising if it is done more seriously in the future. The chemistry is very solid and unexpectedly very funny and entertains us.

For you fans of Jackie Chan and John Cena, you can watch Hidden Strike at the nearest XXI in your city starting July 13, 2023.