Operation Red Sea

While on duty and touring through the waters of the Red Sea, the Chinese Navy patrol fleet receives a distress call that Somali pirates are boarding a cargo ship called the Guangdong and endangering Chinese passengers and seamen on board. They immediately deploy the 8-person Jiaolong Assault Team of the Marine Corps as their forward unit to try to slow the progress of the pirates until the heavily armed naval vessels can arrive on the scene. Using the assistance of a forward helicopter and a sniper dispatched as part of the assault team, they make significant progress to neutralize the situation and manage to eliminate all the Somali pirates onboard while awaiting the main Chinese fleet on duty in the Red Sea. During the operations, the pirate leader attempts to escape, and though eventually he was captured, their primary sniper receives a crippling spinal injury from gunfire during the pursuit and must be replaced. The assault team is praised for their success once the main fleet arrives.

Later, when the civil war situation in the nation of Yewaire (loosely based on Yemen) on the Arabian Peninsula becomes unstable due to a military coup by General Sharaf (loosely based on Ali Abdullah Saleh), orders are given to evacuate local Chinese personnel and workers from the country. Given the unrest and threats from rebels and local terrorist groups, the Jiaolong Assault team is assigned the task of evacuating the Chinese citizens to safety aboard the main Chinese naval vessels in temporary harbor in the area. Meanwhile, a Chinese-French journalist working in the area receives news that the local terrorist organization, Zaka, are prepared to impede local cooperation with the Chinese by all available military and terrorist means available. The Jiaolong squad manages to save the Chinese civilians caught in the warzone and the PAP gendarmerie forces guarding the ambassador just in a nick of time while also saving an Arabic man forced to participate as a car bomber.

The terrorists are also uncovered to have plans to weaponize yellowcake materials into a dirty bomb. The eight-person forward assault team is given very poor support by the local government which is in turmoil. They must also relocate the Yewaire civilians working there to a safe deployment area 75 miles away using only a jeep convoy for transportation.

The convoy is ambushed by terrorists, and takes significant losses from a trained sniper named Taha and mortar attacks. All the Yewaire civilians and local government troops are killed, except the journalist. Zaka uses a kidnapped Chinese citizen as a bargaining chip so that the Chinese navy will release the Yewairian President, and beheads another hostage, who turned to be Abu, Xia Nan's assistant, as an example. Jiaolong and the journalist track down the hostage (first priority of the mission) to a terrorist stronghold with 150 militants, the local leader Sayyid, and armed with mechanized artillery and tanks. The assault team moves in with a risky plan involving covertly swapping the Chinese hostage and the journalist. Although the initial plan goes well at first, the plan backfires when the jeep the team uses gets a flat tire attracting attention, with no other choice the Jiaolong commandos are forced to reveal themselves and fight off hordes of terrorists in the compound. Eventually the Jiaolong commandos are separated with 1 team escaping in a jeep, another in a tank and another attempting to escape through another exit. The enemy sniper Taha from earlier reappears; the replacement Jiaolong sniper and his spotter are able to take him out. The operation eventually succeeds in evacuating all the hostages, but two Jiaolong members are killed in action during the chaos and another two are heavily injured.

The four remaining members later wingsuit into the yellowcake exchange site between the terrorists and the rebel group. Zaka backstabs the rebels, and in the chaos the Chinese operatives manage to corner Sayyid, who commits suicide. Jiaolong retrieves the dirty bomb recipe and captures the cargo plane carrying the yellowcake. Back on board the Chinese fleet, the fallen soldiers are honored for their courage under fire. Before the end credits, 5 Chinese naval vessels intercept 3 US Navy ships warning them they have entered Chinese waters and must leave immediately.

• Zhang Yi as Yang Rui, team leader
• Huang Jingyu as Gu Shun, replacement sniper
• Hai Qing as Xia Nan, Chinese-French journalist
• Du Jiang as Xu Hong, deputy team leader, demolitions specialist
• Jiang Luxia as Tong Li, squad machine gunner and only female member
• Wang Yutian as Zhang Tiande ("Rocky"), squad machinegunner
• Yin Fang as Li Dong, spotter
• Henry Prince Mak as Zhuang Yu, squad signaller
• Guo Jiahao as Lu Chen, squad medic
• Huang Fenfen as Deng Mei a Greenville Energy corporation employee and hostage
• Zhang Hanyu as Gao Yun, fleet commander (special appearance)
• Jacky Cai as a PLA drone pilot
• Wang Qiang as Zhao Haiqiang, fleet commissar of the Chinese ship Linyi
• Simon Yam as Albert a Chief Editor of a local Moroccan newspaper and Xia Nan's boss
• Wang Yanlin as Luo Xing, the primary Jiaolong team sniper
• Sanâa Alaoui as Ena, a local Arabic village girl who helps the Jiaolong team
• Khalid Benchagra as Dr William Parsons, the corrupted head of the Greenville Energy Corporation
• Ayoub Layoussifi as Abu, Xia Nan's Arabic friend and co-worker
• Hassane Guannouni as Sayyid, The leader of the Zaka extremist group
• Mezouari Houssam as Taha, a young but deadly Arabic sniper in the Zaka extremist group

Principal photography began in mid-February 2017 in Morocco and employed 400 Moroccans and 300 Chinese as part of the technical crew group.^[9][10]

Elliot Leung composed the score to Operation Red Sea, and a digital album consisting of 22 tracks was released two weeks prior to the Chinese premiere on 2 February. A limited edition, autographed by both Elliot Leung and Dante Lam was given out only to those who were invited to the film premiere.^[11] Over the years, the music of Operation Red Sea has grown in popularity and has seen placements in various TV shows (most notably Guarding Our City) and concert suite performances by various orchestras.

Box office

Operation Red Sea opened in fourth taking US$76.6 million and climbed to second in its second week, finally reached the top in its third week, taking US$144.2 million for US$498 million after 17 days.^[12] It won the international weekend with US$62.6 million to top Black Panther for the second frame in a row.^[13] The film led the Chinese film market in the third week earning RMB868 million while Detective Chinatown 2 earned RMB483 million and Monster Hunt 2 about RMB162 million.^[14] The film succeeded in moving to the top, knocking Detective Chinatown 2 to second place, while Monster Hunt 2 remained in third. After 23 days of release, Operation Red Sea grossed more than RMB3.4 billion and finally became the top grossing film of the Spring Festival of all time in China, surpassing the previous highest-grossing, The Mermaid.

In the United States and Canada, Operation Red Sea took the highest gross, taking in US$510,000 in 45 theaters on its opening weekend averaging US$11,333, the best per-theater average among the specialty debuts. Distributor Well Go USA touted its launch, which outranked preceding weekend’s Detective Chinatown 2 when comparing straight averages, though that film played 115 runs in its debut.^[15]

Critical response

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an 80% approval rating based on 10 reviews, and an average rating of 8/10.^[16]

Accolades

• List of submissions to the 91st Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of Hong Kong submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

• Operation Red Sea at Douban (in Chinese)
• Operation Red Sea at Mtime.com (archived) (in Chinese)
• Operation Red Sea at the Hong Kong Movie DataBase
• Operation Red Sea at IMDb
• Operation Red Sea at Rotten Tomatoes
• Operation Red Sea at Box Office Mojo
• Operation Red Sea at AllMovie
• Operation Red Sea at Metacritic