Team America is a good alternative because its intended style of humour is exactly the same (loud, verbal, blunt), but Anchorman wound up obnoxious and randumb. It was like modern Spongebob. Brick yelling ''Loud noises!'' is family guy-tier comedy. Team America feels more cohesive in both plot and dialogue. Its jokes are timed better, and don't break the pace of the movie.
I used to love
Team America but for me it hasn't aged too well because of its shallow both-sidesing of American interventionism and the War on Terror (which could also fit your definition of "Western propaganda" since it does ultimately come down on the side of interventionism as represented by Team America). The random humour in
Anchorman isn't that random anyway - "Loud noises" isn't just said in a vacuum, it punctuates the sexist overreacting by the other anchormen and Brick just says it because he doesn't grasp why everyone's yelling but he joins in anyway, which underscores just how silly they're being when faced with a woman who they see as a threat to their own authority. Makes about as much sense as "I like you, you have balls, I like balls."
Both Henry and fury road are shallow nonsense. You're not here for the story, but for the spectacle. They're both equally good in that regard, as is Kolovrat, but Henry is the only one that isn't drenched in propaganda. Eastern or western propaganda is propaganda all the same, and propaganda movies are never good. That's also the reason I didn't bring up Hero (2002).
That's a loose definition of propaganda that could cover just about any film that has themes or messages. Films are artworks that are made by people with viewpoints - even something as shallow as
Hardcore Henry is still shallow in a very particular way that reflects its creators' views, however deliberately. Remember that it ends with the reveal that
WARNING: "Hardcore Henry" spoilers below
Henry's kidnapped wife is actually the villain's wife who has been manipulating him all along and who is brutally killed by having her fingers severed while hanging from an airborne helicopter.
Henry's kidnapped wife is actually the villain's wife who has been manipulating him all along and who is brutally killed by having her fingers severed while hanging from an airborne helicopter.
Maybe I'm not here for the story, but that doesn't negate the fact that the film is telling a story and that this of all possible stories is the story that they decided to tell. What do the filmmakers want me to feel when they end the movie like this? Am I supposed to cheer at such retribution? Why? Not to mention how tacked-on it feels when the character in question has barely been featured in the film anyway and isn't even the main villain. The best action movies don't just work because they provide good action, but also because they give you a reason to care about the characters at the heart of the action (even the "shallow" ones).
Fury Road works because it gives lean but efficient characterisation to its cast that feeds into its narrative and action, while
Hardcore Henry fails because most of its characters are such non-entities (the exception being the annoying comic relief sidekick) that it's near-impossible to care what happens to them. What makes
Fury Road propaganda anyway? The fact that it dares to suggest that women are people too? That's an extremely poor reason to lump it in with the likes of
Triumph of the Will.