3.5/5 starsWriter-director Wen Muye’s bombastic anti-war drama Once Upon a Time in the Middle East 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.Lambasting both sides of an unnamed Middle Eastern conflict – the United States’ 2003 invasion of Iraq in everything but name – this latest effort by the Dying to Survive filmmaker addresses a parade of wartime atrocities, from devastating shock-and-awe strikes to black-site prisons, radicalised child soldiers and suicide bombings.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.🐉《歡迎來龍餐館》香港定檔預告釋出 | 9月11日 戰場上的餐桌‼️China’s latest go-to everyman, Shen Teng (Pegasus), stars as Xu Fu, an accomplished chef who travels to the fictional city of Bahata in 2002, hoping to pay off his debts.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.