Summary
China’s big national holiday film is short on subtlety and big on jingoism, but it still manages to stage some impressive aerial acrobatics.
For a film that seems determined to show China’s might over the rest of the world, SKY HUNTER has certainly learned a great deal from its Hollywood counterparts. With more than a few dashes of Top Gun, and a generous sprinkling of action cinema’s greatest hits, actor/director Chen Li’s film is still unquestionably about the might of the Chinese military.
Wu Di (Chen Li), Zhao Yali (Bingbing Fan), Gao Yuan (Leon Lee) and Ba Tu (Guo Mingyu) have joined the best of the best at the China Air Force Base. During an international operation, Wu’s friend Liu Haochen (Jiahang Li) is caught in the middle of a terrorist plot and hostage crisis, and the only people who can stop it (you guessed it) are the People’s Liberation Army Air Force.
SKY HUNTER is a propaganda film inasmuch as any reaffirmation of the military is jingoistic in its leanings. Nevertheless, Qun Dong’s lean screenplay takes every opportunity to extoll the virtues of China’s armed forces. When the fictional western nation of the Republic of Mahbu fails, possibly because it’s filled with an alarming number of Australian actors, it’s up to China to save the day. Of course, this is hardly surprising for a film that was made in collaboration with the PLA.
Which does mean that the film is impressively staged, having access to the latest aircraft and bases. PLA fighter pilots were asked to perform some impressive stunts in the film, and even the highly CG enhanced chase sequences are legitimately exciting dogfights. If that Andrew Kawczynski score sounds familiar, it’s also because Hans Zimmer produced the soundtrack.
So while this might be designed as a flag-waving for China’s week-long national holiday, it is also a crowd-pleasing action film first and foremost. Systematically checking off tropes, from seriously big explosions to a blind pilot being led back to base, the cocky lead pilot is even fond of buzzing the tower.
SKY HUNTER is short on subtlety, and big on scale. There’s even a terrorist who looks exactly like Zangief from Street Fighter II, just to ensure that we know who the bad guys are. While it’s true that most blockbuster action follows a formula, rarely has there been an example of one so consciously single-minded. There’s a target audience out there for this, and if you’re in it, chances are you’ve already bought the commemorative t-shirt. For the rest of the world, we await the inevitable marionette parody Team China: World Police.
To be honest I kinda lost it when the supposedly Central Asian bad guys start speaking British (or Australian) English instead of Turkic. I mean like at least get some real Russians or Stans to play the role ffs. Another problem I did find with the movie is that half the time it seems like the actors are reciting from a PLAAF pilot manual book, I mean of course real life air combat is much more dull than what many movies would portray it to be, but I don’t think pilots and control would be yelling each and everyone of their actions like a military drill when they are being targeted by a SAM.
It looks like China had found its own Top Gun to accompany it’s Rambo.