Liam Neeson is a national treasure. From voicing the Dumbledore of lions to being a bad-ass action hero at 60, his work has earned him that special kind of reputation where even your Nan has heard of him. Anyway, Neeson has three movies coming out within a week of each other and each has varying levels of greatness: A Monster Calls sees Neeson voice the Dumbledore of trees to help a young boy deal with his emotions; Martin Scorsese’s Silence sees the Irish actor as a missionary trapped by his religious yearnings and the violence of people around him; and in Operation Chromite, he stars as an actor who really shouldn’t be in this pile of crap movie.
Operation Chromite revolves an operation in South Korea during the North Korean 1950s invasion. Captain Jang Hak-soo and seven members of the Korean Liasion Office (KLO) go undercover to North Korea. Under the directions of General MaccArthur, they must kidnap the highest ranking officer in North Korea, secure some mining charts, and blow some shit up as signal to UN forces. With little success, the brave soldiers must try to stop the horror upon their country and defend their independence.
You can see the aim that Operation Chromite was shooting for. This big, brash, and bold war movie that people gobble up every year. Sadly, it falls woefully short of being interesting. Instead, Operation Chromite comes across as this clunky machine that fails to truly convey the political turmoil of the Korean war. In fact, the importance of that war is sidelined for explosions, violence, and guns that go pewpewpew. I mean, the scenes where places and people go boom are genuinely made well but the rest of is basically the 2016 of films.
Directed by John H. Lee, the horrendous dialogue is wooden and lifeless. Not even Neeson’s smooth and sultry Irish tones can imbue the garish lines spoken with gravitas or intrigue. They seem forced: As though Neeson were held at gunpoint and told he has to say these underdeveloped lines or else his daughter gets it.
The rubbish dialogue is just a reflection of a horrible script where there’s a staunch predictability to it. The movie flows in the exact way that you’d expect it too and does nothing to deepen our historical understanding of the true-story mission it is portraying. The film certainly feels low budget despite the epic battle sequences it shows because the script, acting, and story are so bad.
Perhaps all the money that is usually spent on development was actually spent on Liam Neeson in an attempt to get people to watch this movie. His star power alone would probably attract wayward cinema-goers who stumble into movie theatres this festive period to watch a film and they’d be horribly short-changed if they chose this.
Operation Chromite just fails. It’s got pretty “shoot em up” moments but ultimately, you wind up not caring about anyone involved or the real life story they are depicting.
A woeful addition to war dramas.
Operation Chromite is out in cinemas now.
