Review of "Once Upon a Time in the Middle East": China's Oscar Entry Is a Blockbuster Blending Food Porn with Wartime Devastation

Since Zhang Yimou staged the wuxia play "Hero" in 2002, China has failed to secure an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature Film — and this dry spell will certainly not be broken this year by "Once Upon a Time in the Middle East." Like many of the country's works over the past decade, this box-office hit - a […]

This wonderfully entertaining and politically reprehensible anti-war saga follows a Chinese chef through a whirlwind of absurd and brutal events at the start of the Iraq War.

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China hasn't received a Best International Film Oscar nomination since Zhang Yimou's 2002 Wuxia play The Hero — and that dry spell certainly won't be broken with the blockbuster Once Upon a Time in the Middle East. Like so many of the country's films over the past decade, this blockbuster epic - a summer box office hit at home - is a curious display of the strength of the country's commercial film industry. Solidity, in the sense that no simple operation could pull off the technical wizardry and large-scale world-building on display here, where an entire city is reduced to an inferno of collapsing buildings at one point, and a massive military base lurks in a scorching rain the next.

The film is also, as one would expect from this state-sponsored production, blatantly promotional - but in a way that's particularly confusing and shockingly tasteless. If they sound like elements for a good time in a B-movie sense, then you'd be right. Against the odds, Once Upon a Time in the Middle East is also, sadly and surprisingly, very watchable. The Jekyll part of your brain tells you to leave, but the Hyde side holds you in morbid fascination and rolling eyes for the entire two and a half hours of the film.

To get straight to the point, this is a film where China symbolically emerges from the rubble of the Iraq War as a pacifist patriarch and guardian of all the world's children. Director Wen Moyo presents this subtext through the story of Zu Fu (Shen Teng), a chef in debt who agrees to temporarily take over a Chinese restaurant in the fictional city of Bahata in the Persian Gulf region and plans to return to his daughter and mother in China in two years.

The forward cuts to an older Shou Fu with liver spots and an obvious scar on his cheek, telling us that he will indeed return to his family, but it will take much more than a few years—the futile reasons for his delay are the result of his geopolitical misfortunes. He's a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, though, as the film cleverly points out that a good Chinese meal is never unwanted. Indeed, so is global demand - the lifeline that ensures Shu Fu's survival in the storm of film events.

Before we get to the gruesome images of dead children covered in ash, the film begins as a feel-good drama where Shu Fu adjusts to his new environment. Restaurant manager Ma Junsheng (Jiang Qiming) is our hero's bridge between China and his new home, translating between Arabic and Chinese for Shu Fu during tense but diplomatic discussions with restaurant owner Zaid (Sharif Sabi). Luscious close-ups of grilled meats and bubbling stone stews testify to Shu Fu's successful takeover of the kitchen. Nurturing local talent is also on the agenda when he meets a mentor, Saif (Umar Sharif - no, not that one), an angry orphan who learns to channel his anger into the art of Chinese cooking. However, as the film progresses, this anger turns into a furious, hard-fought desire for revenge. Does a delicious roast duck stand a chance? In the film's mind, this is done with the help of the preternaturally compassionate Zu Fu.

Once Upon a Time in the Middle East is something of a double-edged sword, with both the Americans and the not-so-thinly veiled Iraqis being crude caricatures of themselves, and a particular outrage for the most insidious of atrocities: Chinese-American food. In epic solidarity, Shu Fu and Zaid agreed that their restaurant would never serve American-style Chinese food, such as General Tzu's chicken. And when American troops bombard Bahata and occupy the city, a Chinese American soldier (a.k.a. Li Zhiting) bullies his way into a free meal at a Shu Fu restaurant. Not a quitter but a practical realist, the chef pulls a punch and makes a liquor-smuggling deal with the Americans to keep the orphans living in his restaurant safe.

The maddening implausibility that sustains the film's relentless, hypnotizing weirdness means we're never in one place - or mood - for long. Zaid's house is bombed in an intensely melodramatic sequence that culminates in a slow zoom on Zaid cradling his dead wife and child. The next thing we know, he's radicalized and joins a terrorist group. Shu Fu, Ma Junsheng and Seif - the cooking trio - are immediately captured by the US military and forced to head the kitchen at the base. This allows for more lavish shots of delicious food while Shu Fu is, for whatever reason, being targeted by an aggro, block-jawed US soldier. Shu Fu and Ma Junsheng also play Sif's surrogate fathers, whose increasingly violent outbursts change the course of his life more than once.

For all its dewy sentimentality, the film is also surprisingly brutal and bloody, producing a whiplash effect that's most powerfully felt in the film's finale, set in a terrorist stronghold where the Pippis are brainwashed into suicide bombers. Cozy, brotherly scenes (like when Ma Junsheng smuggles Saif a can of soda) directly follow the execution and montage of baby teddy bears calling for jihad. There's a tenderness to the carnage that rubs uncomfortably against the film's humanistic ethos and artificializes the horrific tragedies that befall the film's characters (for all the shuddering and gagging). It's an image of wartime brutality that's both comfortably true and desperately tugs at our heartstrings. In other words, it's completely delusional and hard to look away from.

Retrieved online, 12 October 2026. Duration: 141 minutes.

(China) Release Well Go USA Entertainment is a studio company of Dirty Monkeys Shanghai, Beijing Damai Entertainment Culture Co., China Film Group Co., Ruyi Film Entertainment Company, General Dream Studio Co., Beijing Cheer Entertainment Co., Zhejiang FunAge Pictures Co., Beijing Group Production Film & Culture Co. Creators: Wang Yibing, Jerry Li, Li Xianzeng, Ke Liming, Liu Mingyi, Yufang Chen, Yu Xiaoxu, Zhang Junjie, Yedda Chen. Co-producers: Bai Yimin, Wen Xin, Yu Dong, Chu Yan, Zhang Ning, Zhuang Yan, Zhou Naishi, Wang Lin, Ma Yin, Fu Lion, Zhu Tianfu, Li Li, Yan Zhong, Yang Hai, Zhi Ying, Guan Zhu, Amelie Chen, Zhu Liu, Daihu Yun, Wang Yuanyang, Daihu Yun, Yuan Yuanzhu.

Director: Wen Muyue. Screenplay: Wen, Lang Qunli, Wei Zhong. Camera: Wang Baxu. Editor: Liu Jinghao. Music: Huang Chao.

Shenteng, Jiang Kiming, Omar Sharif, Li Zhiting, Sharif Subi. (Speak Mandarin, Arabic, English)

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