User Reviews

It's a mystery to me why Wolf Warrior became one of the most successful cinematic franchises in the People's Republic of China.

The acting performances are cringe-worthy at times and especially lead actor Wu Jing has stiff body language yet overacts whenever he expresses himself verbally which makes for an unbalanced contrast. The special effects look as if they had been made by a company specialized on video games in the mid-nineties and the movie constantly exposes these flaws. The two worst offenders are the bullet fired in slow-motion in the beginning of the movie that had me laughing out loud and the pack of wolves that doesn't even look remotely close to real wolves. The story is also forgettable and unimaginative. The locations are equally bland and mostly limited to some exchangeable fields and forests. The movie also includes an unhealthy dose of Chinese propaganda but that often comes along with military action films.

Still, after a weak start, the movie still manages to end up being solid. The action scenes are intense and will keep the audience on the edge of its seat towards the end. The lead character who can be described as a resilient non-conformist with a soft core is easy to empathize with and his tough but tender female sidekick is also sympathetic. The film doesn't overstay its welcone with a concise length around ninety minutes which can be considered a strength these days.

In the end, fans of military action movies can give this solid average film a try and will get exactly what they can expect. The movie is comparable to franchises like Rambo and might sit well with a larger audience. In the end, the movie however fails to be innovative enough to stand out. Before revisting this film, I would rathet watch some old Chuck Norris movies again. These film have more charm and less fake animations.

It wasn't too long ago I saw Donnie Yen's Kung Fu Jungle, which offered a triumphant display of frenetically paced, vicious fight sequences, that continuously delivered in originality and entertainment. To say China is renowned for delivering outstanding martial arts movies, would be an understatement – sadly though, Wolf Warrior, does not continue the tradition. Though the words 'breathtaking martial arts' appears on the top of the box I purchased, let me assure viewers of this statement's inaccuracy. It is unfortunate the fight sequences failed to convey anything original, however, the addendum that these scenes only comprise less than five minutes of the feature's entirety, only adds to the disappointment.

Lead actor Wu Jing, who was involved in writing and directing this production, clearly sets himself up as an action hero, his character surviving a number of confrontations that would surely kill any ordinary human being. However, despite even this, the film seldom enthralls. A particularly entertaining scene sees Jing running from cover to cover, avoiding an enemy sniper's fire, however, even this moment is rather dull in contrast with how outstandingly tense it could have been.

Leng Feng (Jing) is a brilliant sniper, whose reckless behavior, in order to save the lives of his fellow soldiers, results in his military career being called into question. Long Xiaoyun (the beautiful Yu Nan) sees Feng's potential, and recruits him into a secret Special Forces group – the War Wolves, a collection of some of China's most accomplished military personnel. During a training exercise however, the lives of all participants are plunged into jeopardy, when drug lord Min Deng (Dahong Ni), in his desperate attempt to avenge the loss of his brother during Feng's last mission, recruits Tom Cat (Scott Adkins), and his band of mercenaries, to kill all involved.

Viewers will be quick to notice the antagonistic force, comprised of muscular militia, are all of Caucasian/European origin, while the protagonists are all Chinese. If anything, the film appears to advertise the strength and courage of Chinese forces, and it is here the film excels, much of the dialogue used in these sequences conveying empowering notions of patriotism, and despite the fact I am not Chinese, even I was impressed by how the Asian super power's military was spoken of. At the same time though, the film incidentally contradicts this with the sheer number of Chinese soldiers that fall like flies against the oppositional forces.

The occasional heroic dialogue however is usurped by the often uninteresting conversations, a number of which are quips at the expense of Xiaoyun's character. A high-ranking female in the Chinese military who commands the War Wolves, you would imagine that she demands respect. Instead, she is the subject of many sexist lines from Feng, and other men, and rather than punishing their insubordinate behavior, she appears content with their unsatisfactory conduct.

Despite the front cover of the film I purchased showing a man with a minigun, please don't be fooled into thinking, like I was, that this weapon will be used in a particularly exciting scene – believe me, it's not. Wolf Warrior has the ingredients of a great action film; however, the recipe goes disastrously wrong, the tension between Feng and Cat being very under-exaggerated, while the villains themselves, despite their bravado, prove to be nowhere near as threatening as an action fan may hope. Furthermore, the lack of depth and attention provided to many of the characters, especially the villains, prohibits the audience from connecting with them, and though the film strives to emotionally involve its viewers, these attempts feel forced and out of place.

Jing and Adkins are clearly adept martial artists, and it would have been great to view them in a film where their talents are proficiently captured – sadly, this feature does not serve as the venue for such excitement. In short, Wolf Warrior has all the hype of an action film, but none of the flavor, and though the end hints at a sequel, we can only hope that if China decides to make a franchise here, the sequels prove to be immensely more entertaining.

A fervid display of Chinese nationalism & jingoistic propaganda, Wolf Warrior treads the same route that countless Hollywood action war blockbusters have walked, and packs some expertly choreographed moments of action as well. However, the story has no meat on it, its characters are dull, the CGI is lame, and the pacing is tedious throughout.

Co-written & directed by Wu Jing who also stars as the lead, the film establishes its tone rather well with its stylishly photographed opening segment, and also makes it abundantly clear who its intended audience are. But once it tries to build a narrative around its primary character, the shortcomings in the script are effortlessly exposed and turns this 90 mins story into a chore.

Not a single character is worth caring about which keeps us detached to everything that unfolds on screen. The action picks up in the second half but it is predictable & uninteresting. Wu brings a physicality to his role that helps keep things afloat but its nationalistic sentiments are overplayed. Scott Adkins plays the baddie and does his usual shtick. And that romance angle is an absolute cringe.

Overall, Wolf Warrior is a bland, boring & blatant propaganda piece that attempts to remind its citizens of their duty & responsibility to their nation but the execution is all over the place. There are a couple intense & captivating scenes of martial arts face-offs where it redeems itself to an extent yet for the most part, the picture remains an unexciting & unstimulating affair. A forgettable, lifeless & uninspiring actioner.

I have read other reviews on here and found they are fairly unfair but each to there own.

This movie is full of action even though a bit over bearing in some of the action scenes where men are on the verge of crying for there comrades which isn't realistic,

The story line is good and you have the typical goodies and the baddies. In all I found this movie entertaining even though it had undertones of Chinese propaganda I found it no different to the American propaganda that we generally see at the movies,

I had to download the subs from a different site, but I found this movie well worth watching and recommend to others who like action movies to watch it.

One area I did not understand was where the wolves come from and why, what was the reason they were there.? this is something to watch for as its all action, it left me rather confused.

out of 10 I give this movie a(7/10)

Wolf Warrior is a Chinese military action romp with a dash of nationalistic fervor.

This is a mostly very watchable action film. It has a strongly military flavour, with a discernible thread of Chinese nationalism, that reflects that nations emerging role as a military superpower. As such, its enjoyable but also a bit corny at times, as films that mix entertainment with nationalism and patriotism, tend to be.

Wolf Warrior is well paced and chocked full of action. Its interesting to see the Chinese take on a military action flick. The cast is a mix of local talent and foreign actors who take on the role of the bad guys threatening China's boarders.

All in all quite worthwhile if you can accept this film for what it is. Certainly its no better or worse than the nationalistic films cast in the same frame from other countries such as the US and UK. Seven out of ten from me.

Although I like Scott Adkins, this film is unfortunately an utter nonsense not interesting on any level and looks more like a Chinese military propaganda action film. For those who like Scott Adkins and his martial arts craftsmanship, please stay away. There is like two minutes of fighting in the whole film and the rest is just shooting and even that is so unbelievably ridiculous that there is no point in watching this flick. Most of all, the wolf attack scene is so ludicrously digital like something taken from a Lorenzo Lamas movie. Adkins should play Boyka and not wasting his time and energy on stuff like this. My overall rating is 3 out of 10 and I really think I am being generous here.

Leng is a cocky sniper who disobeys a direct order and does some fancy snipering and takes out the leader of the smuggling group. For his efforts he gets thrown in jail, draws the attention of the smuggler's older and more successful crime boss brother, and gets recruited into the elite special forces detachment called the War Wolves. The crime boss hires a group of mercenaries led by Scott Adkins who plays an ex-US Navy Seal named Tomcat.

The action set pieces are well choreographed but nothing overly impressive. The climax fight between Jing and Scott is decent but quite underwhelming, considering how much of a good fighters the two actors are, the sequence should have run a bit long. The film also features one scene with wolves, why? Because you know, there's "wolf" in the film's title. To make matters worse, they used a very cheap and silly-looking CGI to bring them to life, I could do without the sequence, truth be told. The in-your-face patriotism is quite annoying and melodramatic and could use some subtlety. The main character Leng seems a little invisible, during the forest sequence he was clearly shot (in the left chest) but this guy continues running as if the bullet gives him more adrenaline and why does he always sweats profusely? It feels like a good third of the running time of this film is spent doing close-ups of his sweaty face.

All in all, Wolf warrior is an ok action flick with entertaining action and average story.

Wow... it's a world where the Chinese communist government are heroes and America's capitalist free market system is the enemy. The 1984-esque change of Chinese history has begun.

I personally enjoyed this movie a lot. It's rapid-paced, intense and quite entertaining. I've also read that some of the action sequences are actually coming from real Chinese special force members who invented them and put them in use in reality. It's also a milestone in Chinese movie genres. Chinese movie is famous for action genres but this one is the first hybrid of genres of action and military. And it's not tradition Chinese martial arts which is mainly for the purpose of performance and exercise, not practical combat. The actions in this movie are a reflection of, but a little glorified, modern military combat. However, I'd say the directing is the biggest weakness of the movie. It's understandable, because the main protagonist directed the movie himself. He admitted in an interview that he really didn't want to direct the movie because he was not a professional director. He was just an martial arts actor. But he spent a lot time and efforts trying to find some professional directors to direct this movie and investors to invest but in vain because no one thinks this genre would be popular. He had to do everything by himself and invest in the movie out of his own pocket. So the movie took 7 years to make. It turned out to be great success at the Chinese box office. If there were professional people helping him refine the plot as well as directing the movie from the beginning, this movie could've been a lot better. Given all these reasons, I gave it an 8 out of 10.

On a side note, by looking at some of the reviews here, I am amazed by how many people have ridiculous double standards. When it comes to a Chinese military movie, it is just Chinese propaganda so it's lame, untrustworthy and worthless. But when it is Black hawk down or American Sniper or any American patriot movies, it heroic, righteous and meaningful even if the movie is about a western country engaging in a war that causes many civilians to die on other nation's soil. In contrary, China, no matter how bad it is portrayed in western movies, it never incurs any war in other countries. Chinese army is built to protect its people from invaders, not to invade. It's funny that how many westerners are brainwashed by their biased media and "propaganda". The world is big and every story has two sides. People should get out of their home and take a look at the outside world. Only by this way can a person form a more objective, mature outlook of things, especially when it comes to political affairs. I believe I am entitled to say this because I myself has 10+ yrs living experiences in both China and USA and I know how media are manipulated and twisted in both countries. Now I don't fully trust either source solely. Rather, they complement each other pretty well to give you a quite clear picture about what is the truth about everything and how media only serve the interest of their own country, even though at the expense of sacrificing objectivity and authenticity.

The IQ of the film has fallen below the human bottom line, and some have even reached the point where they can't bear to look straight. For example, in the red and blue military exercise, hanging a green screen and then hitting a few keyboards can invade the enemy command system. Is this an information war in a science fiction movie? As for the wild wolves that appeared in groups at the scene of large-scale military exercises, did your military first clear the exercise venue? There are also so-called special forces in the special forces, crossing the river in rows and advancing side by side, so they are blown up by mines and mines. Can the marching distance in the jungle be so close! Please, you are special forces, don't you know how to maximize the combat capabilities of individual soldiers?

Most idiotic stupid movie that I've watch in my entire life.

Must admit it is simply a propaganda, and it's just for Chinese people. Not surprised to see such a low rate for this movie on IMDb while it is generally rated high on Chinese film reviewing websites. I AM disappointed to the poor story and CGI of this movie but I think it's already not only a movie for entertainment to most of the Chinese people. You probably have no idea what Chinese kids are like today in the country. Most of them set their life goal to move aboard, seems like our country is too weak to compare with other developed countries. Their heroes are Hollywood superheroes, and every time they hear something about our own country they only see the weakness and just laugh at it. This movie, I say, is to build up the faith, the self-confidence to our country. It is to show the kids that our country is much stronger than they imagine, and to show them that every time when they're in danger, it is the country that will protect them from it. As a 17-year-old Chinese kid myself I can strongly feel what I get from this movie. It probably is not a good MOVIE, but it has the power to move all the Chinese people. Go watch Wolf Worrior II. Much better than this one as it can at least be called a MOVIE.

Well the reason i tried to watch this movie was only because of Scott Adkins..but i guess you cannot make a movie work only with big names and script and logic also goes hand in hand. And latter was nowhere to be found in this movie.

I apologize to any person if my words here offend any one but my review is only related to the movie, it has nothing to do with any one's belief about their country or society. so here it goes, The acting is nowhere to be found; many scenes in movie do not make any sense and it looks like the director had no clue about how to make a scene work when there is no action taking place. So foolish dialogues and weird logics keep coming up. I did not felt the emotion or intensity behind the voice so acting is not the forte of the main lead. so i thought it's fine because in most of the action packed Chinese movies people expect amazing stunts and that compensates the weak acting skills but such is not the case here.

This movie does not delivers in terms of action as well..only the opening sniper shootout scene was bit creative but i kept hoping for more and realized this scene was the only attraction of the movie..and even the finale fight was not up to the mark..the fight scene looks plain and lacks innovative camera work that made Hong Kong movie industry famous and a recent example would be The Grandmaster (2013) if you know what i mean by that.

The movie is like an instant noodle pack with great packaging but far away from being what it has been advertised as. The movie does not make sense at times and appears like story was written while filming the scenes (Pun Intended). I have seen many Chinese movies over the years and being a non Chinese i still found many flaws with this movie..and recommend to watch it on their own risk as any quality movie fan will not like this. This movie is not a good movie and it can be watched for one time only and would recommend to straight away skip to the climax as only there you will see Scott Adkins in action..rest of it from beginning till end is a pathetic experience.

My rating 4.5/10. Some people may not agree with my review but this movie is also not average. so watch it on your risk because you have been warned.

I don't get the hate for this movie. Ridiculous people saying this is just "Chinese propaganda", etc - who cares?? Every year movies are made about the American military, patriotism, etc. Why can't the Chinese do the same?

I went into this for Scott Adkins, and even though he's an unlikeable (although not nearly as unlikeable as in Triple Threat) side character and there were only two hand to hand combat scenes with him, I was not disappointed. There was pretty much non stop action, it was exciting, and even funny at times.

The movie is not without its issues. There were some very obviously unrealistic things that I was baffled by. The way some characters of different ranks spoke to or interacted with each other was very far-fetched. There were times when I didn't really know what was going on or how we got to where we were. I was paying attention, so I don't think I missed it, I think there were just some holes in the script.

I watch all of my movies and TV shows with subtitles, regardless of the language. This is the first time that I can remember where I struggled to follow the dialogue (I've seen a good bit of foreign films). I don't know if the issue was with Vudu or it's like that on blu-ray/DVD as well, but the subtitles were moving too fast and I kept having to rewind and re-read many parts, even multiple times. It was very frustrating.

All in all, it's a very entertaining action movie, as long as you can not focus too much on the flaws and you keep your remote handy.

Leng Feng is a harden super-sniper in the Chinese Army. His unit takes down a drug operation. He disobeys orders to kill the gang-leader. He is reprimanded and is assigned to the special unit Wolf. Meanwhile somewhere southeast Asia, police tries to take down ruthless drug-lord Min Deng, the dead gang-leader's older brother. He coldly has his western mercenaries massacre the police and sends them to avenge his brother.

This is a Chinese military action thriller. It's a lot of action. Some of it is solid but it's rarely realism. They are literally fighting a pack of wolves at one point. Compared to Hollywood, the effects are slightly inferior. There is an impressive amount of real military hardware. It's better than most B-action movies but not quite at the theatrical level. Way too often, the soldiers are standing too close to each other. I guess it conveys something visually but it looks cheesy bad. Overall, I give the action a good passing grade.

The leading guy is hard which could be interpreted as stiff but that's the character. He takes some comedic turns which are quite jarring. The evil plot is questionable at best. It needs to be better written. It should be a simple revenge plot and not that hard to figure out. The good aspect is that the western mercenaries are formidable foes. There is also a cheesy battle over motivations. All of it adds up to a nice fight against tough villains. There is a fine B-movie here but a few stumbles keep it from being good.

...because those CGI wolves were really lame.

Other than that, I've no complaints about this movie. It's a popcorn action flick about a one-man army, similar to many of those mindless Stallone and Schwarzenegger flicks. Not necessarily my type of movie, but it's one of those films you'd want to pop up on a lazy Friday night when you have friends over and are enjoying some pizza and cold beer.

Note: Yes, this film has some China-nationalistic overtones, but it's no different from every other action flick that Hollywood likes to churn out. If your "evil China-propaganda alert!!" is being triggered by this movie, then you've obviously been brainwashed by one too many anti-China 'news' report and this movie is NOT intended for you.

It's also very patriotic and it has Scott Adkins in villain mode/role. The Chinese language is only interrupted when Adkins and his men are on screen, who talk in their native tongue of course. If you don't mind subtitles then in between all the action that is going on, than you will have an action packed movie, that knows its stuff.

There is of course not a lot of acting going on and there is even time for a bit of romance on the side and in between all the mayhem that is going on. Wolf Warrior might not be what everyone dreamt becoming growing up, but it sure looks like a great ad for the Chinese army and some of the values it says it represents. If you get over that fact, there is enjoyment to be found here

Good action + military movie.

There is a lot of improvement to make, but this is a breakthrough for non-US made movie in this category.

There are a lot of implications to China and other countries, but this is in most movies made by US.

I personally love this movie, despite some political part of it.

Generally the movie is very real and CG is up to standard of 2015, which is much better than most movies from China or other countries.

When US makes it, it is not a propaganda. When other country makes it, it is.

How dare you yellowish person fight against white masters, and won?! 'It is propaganda endangered our white privilege! All yellow race should bow down to our white justice!' -- White Nazi

I had heard this movie was highly rated so was really disappointed by it.

It has a poor story and worse acting. Sure, it's only a $12m budget but the CGI is laughably inept. The wolves scene is as bad as the surfing scene in Escape from LA, completely unconvincing.

It's a propaganda film for the People's Liberation Army, that's why it did well in China, like Rambo First Blood Part II or Rambo III in the US, but those were made 30yrs earlier.

If this is what is considered a great Chinese movie, I'll stick with films from Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, etc.