John Cena’s team-up with Jackie Chan finally dropped on Netflix
Netflix has had a solid year of movies, all things considered. Three of their originals are on our list of the best movies of 2023 so far, and that doesn’t even include Extraction 2 or the other solid genre movies that may not clear the bar of greatness but still deliver on Quality Thrills.
The latest hit on the platform is Hidden Strike, which is not technically a Netflix original but made its long-awaited premiere in July after spending more than five years in post-production. It’s been the No. 1 movie on Netflix pretty much since it arrived, unseating the Adam Devine/Ellen Barkin/Pierce Brosnan comedy The Out-Laws and beating out They Cloned Tyrone.
Hidden Strike is a no-brainer combination of two of the most charismatic action stars of their generations, pairing the legendary Jackie Chan with John Cena. The movie spent so long in development that Cena replaced Sylvester Stallone, who couldn’t make the movie work because of commitments to Creed II. Fast-forward through about five years of post-production, and Hidden Strike comes out after Creed III. But what sounds like a worst-case scenario is actually perfect Netflix fodder.
While the star pairing suggests an action comedy, Hidden Strike doesn’t actually settle into that groove until about 40 minutes in, when Chan and Cena’s characters first meet up (and play catch). Before that, it’s a pretty serious “protect the convoy” movie, with plenty of explosions and man-made sandstorms (non-Darude variant).
Chan plays commander Dragon Luo Feng, sent to Iraq to safely transport oil refinery workers across the “Highway of Death” to Baghdad; Cena co-stars as Chris Van Horne, a former mercenary now living in an Iraqi village and helping take care of local children who is
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