Once Upon a Time in the Middle East review
By Joel Humphries · Watched 10.16.26
★★★½ 3.5 / 5
Spoiler-free review
Shot with lush, old-school spectacle, Once Upon a Time in the Middle East plays like a disaster movie where the “disaster” is an American intervention, grounding its biggest sequences in the vantage point of a restaurant just trying to survive. I was taken with the tactile war filmmaking and the humane, workaday stakes—keeping a business afloat, feeding kids, protecting each other—even as the runtime feels hefty. The flip side: Western soldiers are often sketched so broadly they register as propaganda. That’s real and worth acknowledging, but it doesn’t erase a substantial, compelling film I’m glad I saw and can recommend.
Full review — contains spoilers
I have mixed feelings about parts of Once Upon a Time in the Middle East, but I really liked the movie. It’s gorgeously shot, consistently interesting and long enough that you’re going to feel the length. It also contains plenty of what I read as Chinese communist propaganda. Those things can all be true at once.
The story follows a Chinese chef working at a restaurant in a fictional Middle Eastern city, with the Iraq War providing the obvious point of reference. He’s trying to earn money and keep the business going, and the restaurant finds customers among the American soldiers. A Chinese American serviceman helps connect them with that market. For a while, they’re figuring out how to make a living under the occupation, even as everything around them becomes increasingly unstable.
The chef also develops a friendship with the restaurant’s Chinese manager, whose fiancée teaches at a nearby orphanage. That brings the children into their lives, and feeding them becomes another responsibility as the war gets worse. One of the boys starts helping in the kitchen and becomes something of a protégé. There’s a lot happening, but I found the people and their circumstances interesting enough to stay with it.
The war sequences are especially impressive. They have the scale and physical impact of classic eighties and nineties action filmmaking, but we’re mostly experiencing them from the position of people trying to survive the action. It plays like a disaster movie where the disaster is an American military intervention. From the perspective of the people running the local restaurant, that makes perfect sense.
It reminded me of watching an Avengers movie from the point of view of somebody whose shop happens to be underneath the fight. The Hulk is battling an alien, which may be important, but you’re also concerned that he’s going to step on you, destroy your business or kill your kids. Whatever the larger justification, you’re the person trying to get through the day without being crushed. I thought the movie conveyed that very effectively.
Where it loses me is in some of its portrayals of Western soldiers and officers. Their behavior and motivations become so exaggerated that they’re practically caricatures. That’s where the propaganda is most obvious to me. But, in fairness, I don’t know that Chinese people always get treated more generously when we make movies involving them. I can recognize what this film is doing without pretending Hollywood never does the same thing.
The propaganda elements are there, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. They also aren’t the entirety of the movie. There’s a substantial, compelling film here about people trying to preserve a business, feed children and protect one another while the world around them falls apart. I really enjoyed it, and I recommend seeing it if you get the chance.