The Ending Of Hidden Strike Explained

Released in July 2023, the Netflix original action-comedy "Hidden Strike" was actually filmed way back in 2018 but sat on a shelf for years. It's a wonder why it took so long to release, though, because it stars two of Hollywood's most beloved action stars: John Cena ("The Suicide Squad") and the legendary Jackie Chan ("Rumble in the Bronx"). A no-holds-barred action extravaganza, "Hidden Strike" is an East-meets-West buddy comedy that pits two rival mercenaries against each other in the Iraqi desert before they're forced to reluctantly work together when a bigger threat emerges.

From start to finish, "Hidden Strike" is a nonstop torrent of guns-blazing shootouts and relentless fight scenes, all wrapped up in a series of chases involving cars, trucks, dune buggies, and even a caravan of heavily armed buses. A mix of "Mad Max," "John Wick," and "Fast and the Furious," the film may have taken a while to get to the screen, but now that it has, it's been gaining fans faster than a Jackie Chan flying kick. 

But "Hidden Strike" isn't as straightforward of an action movie as one might expect, with a series of complicated plot twists and stunning reveals that need to be unraveled. If you didn't catch everything the first time, through — too distracted by all that impressive action — don't worry, because we've done the work and are here to explain the ending of "Hidden Strike."

Early on in "Hidden Strike" we know that something is amiss about the real plot against the oil refinery workers. Because when Chris' team of soldiers captures their target, snatched from under the nose of Dragon's squad, she doesn't appear to be any kind of diabolical criminal mastermind at all. Her name is Professor Cheng (Wenli Jiang) and she's the one person who has all the codes and information required to run the refinery. It's not long before we learn the truth: Chris' friend and benefactor, Owen Paddock (Pilou Asbæk), is the real evil mastermind of the plot, and he isn't looking to stop a dangerous criminal at all.

The truth is that Owen is actually the brains behind a daring oil heist. He's managed to dupe Chris into helping him kidnap Cheng in order to pump millions of barrels of Iraqi oil out of the refinery, which he plans to make off with in an offshore oil tanker. But after Chris opts out of the rest of his nefarious scheme, Owen kills Chris' brother and tries to frame Dragon and his men.

It's not enough to convince Chris, though, even if it does momentarily lead to a fight between two of the world's biggest action stars, as John Cena and Jackie Chan duke it out in one of the movie's most thrilling fight scenes. But Chris and Dragon must now rescue Professor Cheng and take on Owen and his soldiers if they're going to stop the biggest oil heist in history.

Many critics and audiences have commented that "Hidden Strike" bears many similarities to the "Fast and the Furious" movies, drawing comparisons between "Hidden Strike" and those films' over-the-top vehicle action and outsized action hero heroes. In some ways, the comparison is apt — besides the vehicular violence and brawling heroes, like the "Fast and the Furious" films, "Hidden Strike" is all about family. And more than the action and fight scenes, it's the family relationships that sit at the heart of the film.

When we first meet "Dragon" Luo Feng, he's introduced as a highly skilled mercenary who has arrived to help rescue the oil workers. But we soon learn that he's there for another reason: One of the workers who needs rescuing is his bitter daughter, Mei. She's never forgiven him for abandoning her years before — and never visiting even when her mother lay dying in a hospital bed — and she insists there is nothing he can do to make amends. She never understood the work he did serving his country, the work that kept him away from his wife and daughter.

But in rescuing the oil workers and stopping Owen from robbing an impoverished nation of its most valuable resource, she begins to see why his work was so important. In the end, father and daughter grow closer, with Mei forgiving Luo after a lifetime of resentment.

After Chris takes Dragon and Mei back to his orphanage to spend a night preparing for the rescue mission, he spies a torn photo of a much younger Dragon after peeking through Mei's diary. It's clear that he's been torn out of a family portrait, and this is an emotional moment for the elite fighter Dragon. He tells Chris his own sad story, but audiences may be wondering just what that photo was about. It resurfaces later, and this time there's more to the photo, and it now shows "Dragon" Luo Feng, his wife, and Mei as a child. But how did it get there?

Mei, as we learned, is still bitter at her father for abandoning her and her mother years before, but that doesn't mean there isn't love for him beneath the surface. As we later find out, she kept a torn photo of her father in her diary, which Chris found when he snatched it. But when the day is won, Owen is defeated, and Dragon and Mei stand victorious, we learn that Dragon has kept the other half of the photo all these years. And once he discovered the photo in his daughter's diary, he reunited the two halves for the first time. Taped back together, the complete photograph is symbolic of the love between them that has now been restored. Looking upon the whole photo for the first time in years, Mei tearfully tells her father that she now understands why he left ... and finally forgives him.

When we first meet Chris Van Horne, he's living in a remote village in the Middle East, where he watches over some orphaned children he's taken in. There, he is both a father figure and protector to the children, even playing games with them and teaching them American pastimes and schoolyard songs. But he's also a benefactor of sorts, helping his village stay afloat by using the money he earns from his mercenary missions to improve their way of life where he can. When a problem with the village's water supply surfaces, Chris suddenly finds himself in desperate need of a large sum of money to repair their well. So when he's offered a large payout by his brother for a mission for Owen, he has no choice but to begrudgingly accept the assignment.

The villains even use Chris' love of the orphans against him later in the film, threatening the community when they learn that something they need to complete their heist is hidden there. And this moment demonstrates just what this small community means to Chris because he's willing to let Owen get what he wants if it means keeping them safe. In the end, after Owen is defeated and the heist thwarted, Chris returns to the village — with Dragon and Mei in tow — and helps repair their broken well, bringing life-saving water to the arid desert community.

The ending of "Hidden Strike" didn't just change the course of the story — it also changed the course of star John Cena's life. That's according to the actor himself, who spent decades in the ring as a WWE wrestler, bulking up to become a massive, mountain-sized action hero. But the fight scenes in "Hidden Strike," including the hand-to-hand melees in the film's climax, needed someone nimbler than the hulking brute he was at the time of filming. "I did a movie with Jackie Chan about three to four years ago and they could care less about how strong I was," he told GQ Magazine in 2022. "They just wanted me to kick over my head, which was impossible."

Despite being in phenomenal shape, Cena's overly muscled physique wasn't right for the kinds of moves he'd need for "Hidden Strike," and that meant an entirely new workout routine. "I went over there to train with [Chan] for about three months and they stretched me like taffy," Cena said. As he told the magazine, it was Chan who introduced him to yoga, which proved eye-opening for the action star. "I immediately lost 20 pounds, which was very difficult for me. I even fell into a weird depression because it was like 'I'm losing everything that I worked on for 30 years!'" The actor said he noticed changes the more he did yoga, and not just with his loss of body mass: He said he began to have less pain and more flexibility. "That experience changed my life in many ways, and it taught me the value of making sure your body moves [okay]," he said.