Nice to see Woo-ping come back to some street fighting as opposed to wirework (not that I'd ever complain about the wirework). Adkins is a really terrific racist gweilo bad guy even if I think it's weird that there's apparently no military discipline whatsoever in this movie's Marines (his righteous Wing Chun-practicing victim/subordinate never even bothers to call his antagonizing DI "Sir"). The whole thing is revisionist Chinese propaganda of course, which makes it doubly funny to me that it's…

Reminds you of what this sort of thing can be with an actual director behind it instead of merely a gang of well-meaning producers. Johnson deploys a few basic narrative and visual tricks that haven't really popped up in a STAR WARS film before, along with his usual precise frames and tight technical craft, and a particular attention to emotional continuity. There's also a welcome preoccupation with collateral damage, both physical and psychic. One thing Johnson's films have never really…