When mercenaries seize an offshore platform in Chinese territorial waters, an elite naval commando unit is sent in to take it back.
What is Operation Hadal about?
Operation Hadal opens with a straightforward crisis: an offshore platform in Chinese territorial waters falls into the hands of an armed mercenary group, cutting it off from any outside help. The Chinese Navy responds by deploying the Jiao Long commando team, a special-operations unit built for exactly this kind of confined, high-pressure fight. Director Dante Lam, known for large-scale military action filmmaking, stages the standoff as a slow tightening of the noose — the fight moves from the platform down into the water beneath it, and the deep sea removes any easy way out for either side. Huang Xuan leads the commando team as platoon leader Meng Chuang, with Yu Shi and Du Jiang among its members and Duan Yihong as a senior naval officer directing the operation from command. The 2025 film runs 130 minutes in this version and keeps most of its action underwater rather than on land.
About the cast
Huang Xuan takes the lead as the head of the Jiao Long commando unit, joined by Yu Shi, Du Jiang, Jiang Luxia, Wang Yanlin, Elvis Han, Li Jiuxiao, and Duan Yihong. The ensemble skews toward actors with prior action and military-drama credits, matching the film's emphasis on coordinated, physical set pieces over individual star turns.
Context & significance
Operation Hadal comes from Dante Lam, a Hong Kong director whose recent work has centered on Chinese state military operations rendered as tense, hardware-heavy action cinema. A follow-up to his 2018 film Operation Red Sea, it trades that film's desert and city combat for mainly underwater action — submarines, divers and deep-sea pressure — which distinguishes it from broader war epics fought on land. It arrives as part of a wave of Chinese action productions built around naval and special-forces units, reflecting continued audience appetite for that genre.
Watching Operation Hadal on Ktime
Operation Hadal streams on K-Time with a free account login, offered in its original Mandarin with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles available. K-Time's Farsi-language interface is built for Persian-speaking viewers browsing action and war titles like this one alongside the rest of the catalog.