Operation Relentless

3 stars

This movie left me feeling exhausted. Literally.

A lot of movies promise non-stop action or adrenaline-fueled thrill rides. Few of them actually deliver on the promise; Operation Hadal does, and more. By the time the giant missile-toting robot dogs stomp across the screen, you have to throw in the towel and admit that director Dante Lam is operating on a whole other level, one only hinted at in the first two entries of his epic war series, Operation Mekong (2016) and Operation Red Sea (2018).

It was only after the movie ended that I realized, as thrilling as it was to watch, I’d be hard-pressed to tell anybody what the movie was about (beyond submarines chasing each other around and stuff getting blown up. And giant robot dogs.) I actually had to revisit the press release for details: an advanced nuclear submarine threatens to destroy China’s southern coast, and only the elite Sea Dragon squadron can protect it from annihilation. I can’t say reading that made any lightbulbs go off in my head or gave me a big A-Ha moment. It also didn’t detract from the rush of just watching it without knowing (or caring) what the story was all about, maybe on second viewing.

The film shares enough of the rich history of submarine/war movies to lend it a universal understanding, although the submarines in Operation Hadal feel extremely spacious inside, which takes away from the underlying claustrophobic fear of a submarine film like Wolfgang Petersen’s 1981 classic, Das Boot. There are plenty of those sonar listening scenes with one sweaty non-com wearing earphones, listening for a ping to tell him where the bad guys are hiding, but Lan has found a way to crank that tension up to 11. Lam and his set designers have come up with a new way for the crew to swing from room to room that surpasses anyone just yelling “Make a Hole” and expecting people to get out of their way. Look for it to be copied in all future submarine movies. 

Although it ranks among my favorite guilt-free pleasures, I do regret not having the chance to watch Operation Hadal on the big screen. It might have made a few of the big battle scenes look a little less CGI-enhanced/fake, and it’s such a potentially rollicking crowd-pleaser that it needs to be seen with a crowd. And those giant missile-toting robot dogs would look awesome.