{"id":83534,"date":"2026-09-09T16:46:51","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T08:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=83534"},"modified":"2026-09-09T16:46:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T08:46:51","slug":"review-once-upon-a-time-in-the-middle-east-movie-review-shen-teng-leads-bombastic-anti-war-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=83534","title":{"rendered":"Review | Once Upon a Time in the Middle East movie review: Shen Teng leads bombastic anti-war drama"},"content":{"rendered":"


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3.5\/5 stars<\/strong><\/p>\n

Writer-director Wen Muye\u2019s bombastic anti-war drama Once Upon a Time in the Middle East<\/em> arrives in Hong Kong having already grossed a whopping 2 billion yuan (US$298 million) at the mainland box office, delivering a message of peace and diplomacy through the appreciation of authentic Chinese cooking.<\/p>\n

Lambasting both sides of an unnamed Middle Eastern conflict \u2013 the United States\u2019 2003 invasion of Iraq in everything but name \u2013 this latest effort by the Dying to Survive<\/em> filmmaker addresses a parade of wartime atrocities, from devastating shock-and-awe strikes to black-site prisons, radicalised child soldiers and suicide bombings.<\/p>\n

This is filtered through the perspective of an opportunistic yet affable Chinese chef, whose mouth-watering cuisine is the only thing uniting the warring factions.<\/p>\n

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\ud83d\udc09\u300a\u6b61\u8fce\u4f86\u9f8d\u9910\u9928\u300b\u9999\u6e2f\u5b9a\u6a94\u9810\u544a\u91cb\u51fa | 9\u670811\u65e5 \u6230\u5834\u4e0a\u7684\u9910\u684c\u203c\ufe0f<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

China\u2019s latest go-to everyman, Shen Teng (Pegasus<\/em><\/span>), stars as Xu Fu, an accomplished chef who travels to the fictional city of Bahata in 2002, hoping to pay off his debts.<\/div>\n

He is introduced as a haggard and battle-scarred old man being questioned by immigration officials over an old terrorism charge on his record. Although the US cleared him years earlier, local authorities want more answers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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3.5\/5 stars Writer-director Wen Muye\u2019s bombastic anti-war drama Once Upon a Time in the Middle East arrives in Hong Kong having already grossed a whopping…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":83535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[26579,16524,8816,6608,6095,8426,1543,28,10197,5728,654],"class_list":["post-83534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-antiwar","tag-bombastic","tag-drama","tag-east","tag-leads","tag-middle","tag-movie","tag-review","tag-shen","tag-teng","tag-time","wpcat-33-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/83535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}