Wings of Dread - Full Action Martial Arts Movie Set on An Airplane

This movie was released in Indonesian cinemas since last Friday. I was quite interested as the premise sounds promising plus it starred one of the most well known Indonesian action star. Unfortunately it only played in two studios of the biggest cinema chains which were far located. However, it did play in the other cinema chains but also at very limited studios and time. Anyway my wife and I finally got the chance to watch this yesterday afternoon. OK then, I'll get right on with the movie.

Brief Story Line

Gu Chao Yang (Ashton Chen - Detective Chen, Heroes TV series etc) was an air marshall who decided to go onboard the plane where his girlfriend, flight attendant Dong Lu (Nita Lei - Mojin: Return to the South China Sea, Here We Met Again TV series etc) was on duty. The flight was almost fully booked with a lot of passengers including criminal Du Jiu Lin (Tao Hai) who was being escorted back to China by the police, mysterious woman wearing cap (Qu Jing Jing - The Whole Truth TV series, The Body Guard etc), a soft spoken psychologist (Iko Uwais - Mile 22, Wu Assassins TV series etc), the influencer Li Jie (Yu Mu Lin), the disability guy with walking stick (Liu Feng Chao - The Butcher's Blade, Black Storm etc) and plenty others.

Unfortunately there were terrorists who hijacked the plane and demanded to divert their destination. Despite not being on duty, Chao Yang did his best to try and save the plane and the passengers.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

The movie had a pretty bright start and did not take long to show us some nice fight scenes to give us hint of what was to come. But things obviously got more interesting as soon as the plane took off with little intro of the people onboard. There were a bit of guessing game between my wife and I who would be the bad guys (although one person we already knew for sure as it was mentioned few times in the news). To be honest, I was actually surprised at first when I saw it has duration of only 86 minutes. After seeing the movie though, I could understand that it was already sufficient to provide long continuous totally intense and highly suspenseful nonstop fight scenes in the confined space of an airplane. Any longer than that, it would be too tiring.

The plot in here was very standard and easy to understand. Since the story was set majority on a plane, there were only limited places for fights to occur. There were few things which did not make sense as I am sure audience would clearly notice as shortcomings, but it did not really matter to us cause the fight sequence was too awesome for us to let those parts ruined our pleasure. We really admired the ability of the crew to ensure all those fight scenes were amazingly done. This movie was co-directed by Qin Peng Fei (Fight Against Evil, KunLun Battle etc) and Ashton Chen himself. The two of them had coordinated several times in the past. I believe the movie was also entertaining because it was supported by Iko Uwais and his team. I saw some Indonesian names in the closing credits as part of the cast and I believe the stunts.

The film included a large ensemble cast but I was unfamiliar with them. I did feel to have seen Ahston Chen before and only after checking his name on the internet that I realized he used to be that young boy who played in Shaolin Popey movies in the 90s together with another kid actor known as Bo Bo Ho (Steven Hao). So if you had seen their films in those period, you would probably be able to identify him. My wife did not recognize him either, though once I told her about this, she immediately could see the resemblance. During the closing credits, it also showed some behind the scenes of the fight sequence combined with few bloopers (not the funny kind though). It was a very interesting part of the movie, similar to those Jackie Chan's older films and also nice to see Iko Uwais highly appreciated by the crews.

In the end this is a film that was aimed to give satisfaction for people looking for some entertaining close hand to hand fights. The nonstop and continous fight scenes would be satisfying for those hoping for such in a movie. The story itself was not extraordinary but the editing was OK enough. There were few parts that were too over the top and some overly patriotic scenes which was quite usual in a Chinese movie. Btw, this is an IQiyi original and could be watched in China in the streaming platform but not available in Indonesia. Hence it was a good move for the film to be released in Indonesian cinema so it could be seen by local audience. So if you are hoping for an almost nonstop action in confined space, then you would be entertained by this movie. As long as you do not expect a well written film with wonderful plot, I believe you would be entertained by this just like me and my wife.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars