‘Once Upon a Time in the Middle East’ Review: A Baffling, High-Budget Chinese Blockbuster Blends Culinary Comedy with Geopolitical Absurdity

Not since Zhang Yimou’s acclaimed 2002 wuxia spectacle “Hero” has China secured an official Academy Award nomination for Best International Feature, and that notable dry spell is virtually guaranteed to continue unbroken with the country’s latest bombastic submission, “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East.” In alignment with the trajectory of the nation’s commercial cinema over the past decade, this ambitious summer box office hit serves as an extravagant testament to the sheer scale and technical might of China’s domestic film industry.

It is a display of strength in the most literal sense, demonstrating that no modest operation could possibly orchestrate the level of technical wizardry and massive world-building captured on screen. At various points in the narrative, an entire fictional city is reduced to an inferno of crumbling facades, while a later sequence depicts a massive military base ambushed in a torrential display of blazing pyrotechnics and coordinated explosions.

True to expectations for a state-backed production of this magnitude, the film is blatantly propagandistic. Yet, the manner in which it delivers its messaging is particularly baffling and, at times, shockingly tasteless. If those elements sound like the recipe for an entertaining, B-movie style guilty pleasure, that assessment is entirely accurate. Against seemingly impossible odds, “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East” manages to be both regrettably and miraculously watchable. It induces a distinct psychological split: the more sensible part of your brain urges you to walk out, while your morbid curiosity keeps you firmly planted in your seat, watching in twitchy-eyed fascination across its sprawling two-and-a-half-hour runtime.

To frame the core narrative directly, the film presents a universe where China symbolically emerges from the catastrophic rubble of the Iraq War as a pacifistic patriarch and a guardian figure for the world’s children. Director Wen Muyue delivers this heavy-handed subtext through the travails of Xu Fu, portrayed by prominent actor Shen Teng. Xu Fu is a debt-ridden chef who agrees to temporarily take over operations at a Chinese restaurant located in the fictional Gulf-region city of Bahata, operating under the assumption that he can return home to his daughter and aging mother in China within two years.

Flash-forwards featuring an older Xu Fu—distinguished by liver spots and a prominent scar across his cheek—confirm early on that he does eventually make it back to his family. However, the journey takes far longer than anticipated, delayed by what can only be described as a cascade of geopolitical misfortunes. He is a quintessential everyman caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet, the film relies on the running conceit that a well-prepared Chinese meal is universally appreciated. Culinary competence becomes a global currency, serving as Xu Fu’s primary lifeline as he navigates a whirlwind of chaotic historical events.

Before the narrative plunges into grislier imagery involving ash-covered victims of urban warfare, the film establishes itself as a feel-good dramedy. Xu Fu adapts to his unfamiliar surroundings with the help of Ma Junsheng, a frazzled, soft-spoken restaurant manager played by Jiang Qiming. Ma acts as a vital cultural bridge, translating between Arabic and Chinese during tense diplomatic discussions with the establishment’s owner, Zaid, portrayed by Sherif Sabby.

During these early scenes, the camera lingers on glossy, mouthwatering closeups of grilled meats and bubbling stone-pot stews, underscoring the immediate success of Xu Fu’s culinary takeover. The chef also takes on a local mentee, Seif, played by Omar Sharif—noting the coincidence of sharing a famous name, though in this case, a young actor portraying an angsty local orphan. Seif learns to channel his profound personal rage into the meticulous art of Chinese cooking, though this underlying anger ultimately festers into a war-hardened desire for retribution as the geopolitical situation deteriorates.

The film operates with a caricatured worldview regarding the international actors involved in the conflict. Both American forces and the thinly veiled regional combatants are painted with broad strokes, while a very specific narrative ire is reserved for what the film treats as a culinary abomination: Chinese-American fusion food. In a moment of cross-cultural solidarity, Xu Fu and Zaid mutually agree that their kitchen will strictly reject U.S.-style adaptations like General Tso’s chicken.

Later, when U.S. troops reduce Bahata to ruins and establish a military occupation, a crass Chinese-American private, played by Aarif Lee Zhi-ting, attempts to bully his way into complimentary meals at the restaurant. Rather than reacting as a helpless pushover, Xu Fu proves to be a pragmatic realist; he absorbs the conflicts and leverages his kitchen skills, striking up an illicit booze-smuggling arrangement with the American occupiers to ensure the safety of the local orphans sheltering in his establishment.

The maddening implausibility that sustains the film’s relentless momentum ensures that audiences are never anchored in a single physical location or emotional register for very long. In one intensely melodramatic sequence, Zaid’s home is destroyed by an airstrike, culminating in a prolonged, agonizing camera zoom over a devastated Zaid cradling his dead wife and child. This trauma swiftly radicalizes him, leading to his recruitment into an extremist faction.

Meanwhile, the core culinary trio of Xu Fu, Ma Junsheng, and Seif find themselves captured by the U.S. Army and reassigned to run the kitchen on a military base. This setting permits yet another series of sumptuous food preparation montages, even as Xu Fu becomes the specific target of an aggressive, block-jawed American soldier. Amidst this tension, Xu Fu and Ma Junsheng attempt to act as surrogate paternal figures to Seif, whose increasingly violent outbursts threaten to derail his future permanently.

Despite its underlying layers of dewy-eyed sentimentality, the production is frequently startlingly brutal and bloody. This creates a severe tonal whiplash, which reaches its peak in a final act set within a terrorist stronghold where young children are systematically indoctrinated and prepared to become suicide bombers.

Scenes of domestic, brotherly warmth—such as Ma Junsheng quietly slipping Seif a smuggled can of soda—are immediately juxtaposed with swift executions and jarring montages of young children clutching plush toys while reciting radical slogans. The slick, highly stylized cinematography of the carnage sits uncomfortably against the film’s overarching humanist message, rendering the horrific tragedies experienced by the characters somewhat artificial, despite the visible physical and emotional labor put into the performances by Shen Teng.

Ultimately, “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East” presents a vision of wartime devastation that is simultaneously blithely matter-of-fact and aggressively manipulative of the audience’s emotions. It remains an utterly delusional cinematic artifact, yet one that proves remarkably difficult to look away from.