Customer Reviews

Shanghai Triad

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a movie I think people either like a lot or dislike a lot. I've seen it twice in movie houses and now three times on DVD. It's a cool film, decadent to the core and with only one really likeable character, a 14 year old boy. I'm one of those who like it a lot.

The boy is brought to Shanghai (in the 1930s) by his gangster uncle to work in the "family" of a powerful, aging drug boss. The drug lord's mistress, a nightclub singer, is played by Gong Li. The boy is assigned to fetch and carry for her. Gong Li plays her as a willful, beautiful, selfish and perhaps overly confident courtesan. Gong Li sings and dances several times as the star of the nightclub, and she is wonderful in the part.

Nearly everything is seen from the perspective of the boy -- which means you don't get the full picture at any one time. There's a brutal gang attack and the boss with his key henchmen, his mistress and the boy flee to an isolated fog-bound island to regroup and plot. There's betrayal and merciless, calculated revenge, and practical killing. The ending, needless to say, is not pleasant...except, perhaps, for the boss. The boy, at least, survives.

The film is gorgeous to look at and beautifully lit and photographed. The DVD transfer is excellent.

After hearing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's Zhang Ziyi compared in acting ability to Gong Li, I decided to find a film of hers. Not only was Shanghai Triad my find, but Zhang Yimou, the director, also direct Zhang Ziyi 2 years ago in a more simple film. Shanghai Triad concerns young Shuishung Tang, who has come to Shanghai on the order of his Uncle. Tang's Uncle is in the employ of a mob boss, who is getting on in years, but is very powerful. After sometime, Young Tang meets Bijou, The boss's mistress. This of course, is Gong Li. Bijou appears very beautiful when we first see her, but after seeing her backstage, we quickly wonder if she has any redeeming qualities. The city life seems to have spoiled her, and she treats young Tang like garbage. It is after a supposed run-in with trouble that the Boss is injured (along with Tang's Uncle), and the Boss, Bijou, Tang, and several of his associates go to a small island to hide. While, there, Bijou and Tang encounter a widow and her daughter. As she begins to talk and play with the widow and her daughter, Bijou's haughty attitude seems to disappear, and we see the woman she could have become had she not gone to shanghai. The widow and her daughter are almost sentiments to what life could have been like for Bijou: carefree, and almost no troubles like she is in now. The film runs 2 hours long, and you will not believe it when an hour has gone by, becuase of the film's pacing. Gong Li does several wonderful turns, especially in a musical selection called "Moonlight," dressed in Chinese outfit with a delicate pink fan. There is also a cute but touching scene where she and the young widow's daughter do a small duet to a children's song that both know. The ending will leave you either in tears, or feeling empty. For me, it was the former.

Having become a recent fan of Asian cinema (one of my favorites being 3 SEASONS), I found this movie, from its outset, to draw me into the world of Shanghi, China during the 1930s. Created with precision and stunning decor both interior and exterior, the director has crafted the story of a boy who comes to the city to work as a servant for a mafia boss's "Miss." The story progresses over a week's time and is evenly paced. It's strength is found in each scene, which maintained my interest with the careful brilliance and awe of each shot, and the obvious abilities of the film's actors/actress. Highly recommended, especially to the film buff who is looking for a story/visual film that goes beneath the surface.

This movie should be in any collection of great films.

Wow . A chinese gangster story from the pre revolution times. But ladies and gentlemen, expect no blasting action here. This is a Zhang Yimou film and everything which makes his films great is here.
A young teenager from a village comes to shanghai in order to work in Tang family mansion. ( a powerful underworld family in which he is also a distant relative) He is assigned to serve the boss' mistress called bijou (gong li) and gets the shock of his life in just couple of days.. He witness a shooting even before his arrival to the house later finds himself surrounded with confusing modern world devices like telephone which he has never seen and finally finds only distant relative in the house (uncle lo who brought him) dead.. Add that bijou's arrogance and spoiled behaviour and gang business around the family and you get the picture. We witness those days by the eyes of this young villager boy. Shanghai is where traditional east and modern west meets in china and Yimou captures it best with the nite time shots of the club where bijou works. Tap and cabaret dancing, half western half traditional songs sung in mandarin, dresses. gang members with traditional dresses as well as western style hats, pistols as well as traditional knives all brings the situation to life.
As I mentioned , film is based on a gangster story seen by the eyes of a village boy. But action is rather hiding. Killings and fighting are left the imagination of the viewer but their signs are always there like bloody knives, dead bodies being washed near the pool and blood in the house. These are the moments that the main character witness and we watch the film from his perspective. We also witness the underworld conspiracy and strategic planning and betrayal but again as much as a boy can witness, hear and understand.
As the film goes deeper, characters became more open and visible. For example, bijou's real character starts to come out in the island and her arrogance dissapears. Her relations with the boy and the island villagers bring her back to the roots, the pure and innocent life in the village. Film is actually more oriented on the inner side of the characters instead of totally focusing on a strictly godfather type story. Shanghai represents the sophisticated, dangerous and confusing side of bijou. But island is being her true self. Boy starts to put more faith in her from spitting to her glass of water in shanghai to being a totally loyal servant in island. Yimou captures all these with the simple but effective shots in the island and shanghai.
Performances are excellent, especially Gong li giving her very best. Also portrayal of the realisticly drawn chinese godfather is remarkable.
In sum, shanghai triad is a great film. It may not be a far eastern cinema masterpiece , but it is good enough. A story of love, death,innocence, corruption,faith and betrayal. A chinese godfather type movie from the eyes of a young witness.
Zhang yimou and gong li. A great chemistry on screen.

A young boy is sent to Shanghai from the country to work for his uncle, who is a powerful crime boss. He is made assistant to his uncle's concubine, Bijou, who is also the featured performer in his nightclub. (The depiction of Shanghai nightlife is one of the charms of this film. We are treated to two wonderful cabaret numbers.) The boy becomes a silent witness to a life of waste, deception and betrayal. I have never seen a more heart-breaking finale than the one in this film. It is a harsh dramatization of how average, hard-working people are so often trampled and destroyed by those with too much power and too few scruples.

You've seen a lot of US films about the Mafia (the Godfather Trilogy), or Cuban-Americans (Scarface), Chinese-American (Day of the Dragon), Jewish or Irish gangsters. If you like this genre, this is one to add to your collection. The sets and photography are first-rate, and while the story can be reset to any country, the Shanghai of old is part of the attraction of this film. Gong Li, of course, is the best reason. As the classic whore with the heart of gold, she is bitchy and scheming but comes through as compassionate and gutsy.

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This could be an American gangster movie except that it is so beautiful. Well, that and the fact that it takes place in Shanghai in the 1930s. Gong Li plays Xiao Jingbao ("Bijou") the moll, a self-centered, vain, mean, slutty songstress kept by the "Boss" (Baotian Li) of Shanghai's underworld. As usual with director Zhang Yimou every set is gorgeous and artfully planned, the story compelling, and the human psychology veracious.

We see the events through the eyes of Shuisheng (Wang Xiaoxiao) a 14-year-old boy from the country who, because he is a member of the trusted Tang family, is brought to the city to be a servant to Bijou. She treats him and everybody else like dirt while she plays the Boss for a fool. We can guess that her comeuppance will be severe. Oh, but HOW severe? In this Zhang Yimou goes beyond what one has seen in American gangster movies and gives us something from Machiavelli and Genghis Kahn.

The film is a little slow in parts and Gong Li plays her role so well that she is most disagreeable--that is, until what I might call the "turn." This occurs when she is forced to go with the Boss to the country after a rival has attempted to kill him. Bijou is bored. There is nothing for her to do so she goes to the house of a country widow named Cuihua (Baoying Jiang) with a nine year old daughter Ah Jiao (Yang Qianquan) to lord it over her and to amuse herself with these country bumpkins. But the surprise is that in the process she is returned to her childhood when she herself was a country bumpkin. Zhang Yimou plays this part of the film masterfully as we slowly realize that Bijou is jealous of Cuihua and her poor but idyllic life. But that is something she can never admit to herself as she spies on Cuihua with her lover. One almost gets the sense that Bijou would like to be in Cuihua's place with that crude country lover.

At one point Bijou makes Cuihua loan her some of her peasant clothes and then takes delight in wearing them. We can see that Bijou is in denial about how much of a slave to the master she really is and how unsatisfying is the life of a kept woman regardless of how well kept. She realizes that her life is empty. And now we see a certain generosity of spirit: she gives the boy some silver coins; she tells the boss to spare the woman, but it is too late. Because you talked to her she knows too much, he says. He adds, you see, it is your fault again.

This film sits well with the current communist government of China despite or perhaps partly because the Boss with his small round eyeglasses looks a little like a Chinese Trotsky. But more importantly Zhang Yimou's depiction of the criminal decadence of China in the 30s before the rise of communism is exactly what Maoists like to see. Communism freed the Chinese from all that, is perhaps the idea.

This is not the only film of Zhang Yimou's to play to communist sensibilities. His Raise the Red Lantern (1991) also shows in a different way the moral corruption of what might be called the ancient regime. But Zhang Yimou can be forgiven for playing to the powers that be because he does it with subtle irony and for a purpose, the purpose being to give himself the celebrity and an international reputation so that he is able to make films that might in some way criticize the communist state while he maintains a position of loyalty to that state. Working from within, it might be said. We see this in his To Live (Huozhe) from 1994 in which the hardships under communism are not euphemized. To be more exact it might be said that Zhang Yimou sees the excesses of Mao's regime but realizes that Mao was a stage through which China had to pass; and at any rate, who would want to go back to the time of the capitalist gangsters?

The airy, white tops of the reeds wave in the breeze. The colors are straw and the cottage on the island is neat and holds out against the rain. Inside Cuihua cooks and weaves a basket. She is content. Bijou, in her red dress and her red lips, wearing her jewelry and her superior manner, is not. She recalls the mulberry trees of her childhood and how she would climb the trees and eat the tree-ripened fruit. All the riches in the world cannot bring back those days, nor can she return to them.

She would like to take nine year old Ah Jiao with her back to Shanghai. Ironically Ah Jiao in her innocence wants to be like "Miss," which is Bijou's "title." Ironically, however, it is the Boss who takes the little girl back so that she can grow into the next Bijou.

The ending of the film is as brutal as anything you might expect to see, and yet there is a kind of poetic justice in what happens. In part. Zhang Yimou is always about politics, even though the politics are sometimes "just" domestic politics, as in Raise the Red Lantern. But he does the politics in a way that leaves no doubt: justice or what comes to pass is shaped by those who hold the power, whether it is the power of the state, or the power of the gangster boss, or the power of the master of the house, not by those who do not hold power. And that is the trenchant reality behind the great beauty of any Zhang Yimou film.

This would be your regular 30's gangster flick, albeit a gorgeous one, but for a single reason: Gong Li. Watching the goings-on register on her face is enough to elevate this story from sad to tragic. This film is suble and graceful and epic, and superior to any of Hollywood's takes on the genre that I recall. Six stars if it was possible.

This is a well-made, wonderful film. It's much more interesting the than the tired american "mafia gangster" genre. As with all of his works, the director uses metaphors. The story below the obvious story is the real gem here. Even more entertaining than his "Raise the Red Lantern"

This 1995 Chinese film is set in the flamboyant gangster era of the 1930s in Shanghai. We see it through the eyes of a 14 year old boy who is a distant relative of the gang leader and comes from the country to work as a servant to the gangster's mistress played by the beautiful Gong Li. She's arrogant, harsh and demanding and it's easy to dislike her.

There's a gang war going on and suddenly the boss, his mistress and the boy have to go into hiding on a small island where they can't be found. The only inhabitants are a widow and her young 9-year old daughter who is endearing to everyone. But there is no escaping the violence around them. Soon, everyone is caught up in it. The inevitable ending is sad and disturbing.

Acting is universally good, especially the roles played by the boy, Wang Xiaoxiao. He's wide eyed with wonder and very believable. The director is Yimou Zhang. I've seen several of his films and they are all good, but this somehow misses the mark. It was well done well but I was uneasy throughout and found it dragged a bit. Shanghai Triad is successful inasmuch as it depicted a time and place and atmosphere. I recommend it for its style and introduction to Chinese film. However, I save my higher recommendations for some his other films such as Raise the Red Lantern, House of Flying Daggers and Hero.