Five years after production, the long-awaited team-up of Jackie Chan and John Cena has finally arrived.

Dragon Luo has been tasked with escorting Professor Ying Cheng through the Highway of Death. The professor has key codes and a USB drive in possession that can access the biggest oil refinery in the world. Chris is a former mercenary who is living in a small village where they are in desperate need of water. When Unicorp worker Owen arrives and informs Chris he will need $100,000 to fix the equipment necessary to get the water, Chris takes one more job with his team, which includes his brother Henry.

The job involves getting Ying Cheng from Dragon Luo by setting up a sandstorm on the Highway of Death. When the mission is a success, Chris learns of Owen’s true intentions and wants no part of it. When he finds out Owen has killed Henry due to his brashness, Chris runs into Dragon and at first, the two are at odds with each other. However, upon realizing they have the same common enemy, they find themselves teaming up to stop the biggest oil heist in history.

After a disappointment in Vanguard, there would be a sense of redemption for Jackie Chan with his film Ride On, released earlier this year. However, there had been one project that he had made that was still awaiting release and fans were anticipating. That was the film that originally had been intended to be a team-up between Chan and Sylvester Stallone. However, Stallone would leave the project due to a schedule conflict and a replacement was found in WWE superstar turned actor John Cena. Shot in 2018 and delayed at times due to the pandemic and other things, the film has finally seen the light and it is ultimately a mixed bag.

Chan has been looking for more projects where he doesn’t just rely on action but tries to show emotion as an actor. The Foreigner is still hailed as one of his best films in recent years. For this film, there is a great backstory involving Dragon’s estranged relationship with his daughter Mei, an engineer. She blames her father for not being there for her or her mother, who died due to sickness while Dragon was on a secret mission for the government. She prefers he selects his family over his work, something that is near and dear to Chan himself.

As for John Cena, his character of Chris is a retired mercenary who gets a pay cut of his brother’s missions as his brother Henry, played by Amadeus Serafini, is the new leader of the group. The group is quite an eclectic bunch, including British martial arts champion Rachel Holoway as “Tomb Raider” and Tim Man, whose Knox and whose half-tattooed face gives him two nicknames: Etch-a-Sketch and Scribblehead. There is a character from Suicide Squad named El Chato and he could be called “Medio-Chato”. Cena does the “last job” gig to save the village he lives in as they are desperate for water and of course, this meshed with his brother’s death at the hands of the villains, are his reasoning for teaming up with Dragon.

Pilou Asbæk, known for his role as Balon Greyjoy in the series Game of Thrones, plays it more cool in the role of Owen, a Unicorp engineer whose work for the company nearly sixteen years and not getting accolades clearly gives him a motive to play lead villain. Asbæk seems likable at first when he attempts to help Chris get water from the village pump. However, once this mission involving getting Professor Ying is complete, he still plays it cool with little mumblings of “idiot” now and again. He does go a bit over the top towards the final act.

Cena and Chan’s attempt to act like a buddy comedy team is saved by Cena’s natural ability to pull off some hilarious comic timing but the blame is more on the script where at times, there are some cringey one-liners between the duo. However, Cena is the saving grace of the film once he lets his natural comic timing comes in. There are some action gags too that work involving grenades that leads to some hijinks.

As for the action, led by JC Stunt Team members He Jun and Han Guanhua, it relies on 90s style wirework due to Chan nearing 70 years old. However, it still holds well here for the most part. There is one fight that really stands out and it is early in the film. It involves Knox taking on a female member of Luo’s team inside one of the buses going through the Highway of Death. The camerawork used is not extreme closeups or quick cutting, but rather a panoramic-360-degree brand used that makes the fight look great.

There is also a pretty good action scene where Cena uses a steep pipe against some of Owen’s men and we get to see a close-up shot of Cena wielding the pipe along with the camera. My guess is He and Hua were trying something new with shooting action and with director Scott Waugh (whose dad Fred was a famous stuntman known for doubling Nicholas Hammond as Spider-Man in the 1970s) at the helm, it is still enjoyable.

Hidden Strike is not the great anticipated team-up of Chan and Cena, but it is not completely bad either. There are a few flaws in the VFX and the script when it comes to one-liners. However, Chan, Cena, and cast make the most of the script and are able to make this a major upgrade from the disappointment that is Vanguard.

WFG RATING: B-

XYZ Films present a Talent International Media production in association with Changchun Film Studio, Epitome, Flame Pictures, and Huaxia Film. Director: Scott Waugh. Producers: Esmond Ren and Hans Canosa. Writer: Arash Amel. Cinematography: Tony Cheung. Editing: Scott Waugh.

Cast: Jackie Chan, John Cena, Pilou Asbæk, Tim Man, Amadeus Serafini, Ma Chunrui, Ma Li, Gong Jun, Hou Minghao, Jiang Wenli, Chen Jingke, Xu Jia, Zac Wang.