Bullet Points: Wolf Warrior

Wolf Warrior was easily the most patriotic movie I have seen in years.

But this wasn’t Rocky Balboa fighting (and ending?) The Cold War patriotic. This wasn’t patriotic like the Team America: World Police theme song. And it wasn’t the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s tale of inspiration and patriotism in Miracle (and in reality for that matter). This was Chinese patriotism. And if Wolf Warrior taught me anything about the culture in China, the Chinese may love their military as much as we love our own military here in the United States.

• Sniper: Wolf Warrior is the story of special forces soldier Leng Feng (played by Jing Wu aka Jacky Wu). Feng is a sniper and when he goes against orders from his commanding officer and takes a shot, that kills the brother of nefarious crime lord Min Deng it puts Feng on the hot seat. One argument is that Feng should be locked up for disobeying a direct command, another argument is that Feng should actually be promoted to the Wolf Warrior detachment. The Wolf Warriors are the special forces within the special forces. The commanding officer of the Wolf Warrior detachment is Long Xiaoyun (Nan Yu from The Expendables 2 fame). Xiaoyun decides Feng’s fate and she decides to make him a Wolf Warrior.

• War Games: Feng gets his fair share of hazing from the existing Wolf Warriors, but he proves to be a valuable asset in a special exercise between the two divisions of the special forces, as he has intimate knowledge of how the other side operates having just been a part of their camp. But this routine exercise between the red team and the blue team doesn’t go exactly as planned. Remember the crime lord I mentioned in the paragraph above, he’s a really nasty dude. And he has vengeance in his heart. So in between drug trafficking, human trafficking and financing terrorism, he manages to hire a bunch of mercenaries to hunt down the man who shot his younger brother. The wild card element of the mercenaries turn this routine military exercise into something very real and very deadly.

• Mercenaries: What initially grabbed my attention about Wolf Warrior is that it was a Scott Adkins film. At least that was my misguided perception going in. Adkins does play a big role in the movie. His character’s name is Tom Cat. I assume this is just a nickname and he is not the son of Mr. and Mrs. Cat. I could be wrong and his birth name could very well be Thomas Cat. But considering there are also characters named Crazy Bull and Monkey, I’m going to go with Tom Cat being a nickname. Tom Cat is a former SEAL turned mercenary and is the man selected by Min Deng to lead the hunt for Leng Feng. Adkins may be one of the most versatile action stars ever. Adkins can play a villain as easily as he can play a hero but since the Chinese military were the heroes in this film, the UK native needed to go the villainous route as I don’t think he could pull off the role of the Chinese hero. As you might expect, when Adkins and Wu get to cross paths some great action ensues and their fight is one of the highlights of the movie.

If you are an action movie fan, who is not going to be offended by non-American patriotism being displayed, I think you will enjoy Wolf Warrior. Wolf Warrior has a great blend of military action and martial arts and at 90 minutes there is never a dull moment.

I would now like a few more moments of your time so I can share some bonus Wolf Warrior Bullet Points…

• The Adkins Diet: Wolf Warrior provides the audience with its minimum daily requirement of Scott Adkins. But if you want more than the minimum, you’ll need to look elsewhere. I think I’ll be checking out Zero Tolerance or Close Range in the coming weeks to get my Scott Adkins fix!
• Merchandising: The Wolf Warrior logo used in the movie is beyond awesome and would make for a fantastic t-shirt. If there was a Bulletproof Action Shop Zone, we’d totally sell knock off Wolf Warrior logo shirts!
• Double Dipping: Jing Wu is not only the star of Wolf Warrior, he was also the director.
• No Worries PETA:  At one point during the war games, the Wolf Warriors encounter actual wolves in the wilderness. This leads to a tense stand off and eventually into an episode of When Animals Attack. Fortunately, the Wolf Warriors were armed. But don’t worry PETA, these were CGI wolves and no actual wolves were harmed during the making of this film.
• Crazy Subtitles: If you aren’t a fan of movies with subtitles, you are not going to want to check out Wolf Warrior as there are subtitles through out. They subtitled stuff that probably didn’t even need to be subtitled like a yell with “AR!” and they even subtitled laughter with “HA HA HA HA”
• Love Chinese Style: Love is truly a universal language and no subtitles are needed to tell that Nan Yu’s character is into Leng Feng for more than his awesome snipering skills.