Shang hai tan xu ji

Based on the famous classic TV series from the 80s, being compared "Godfather" to the eastern version, however I thought it was very abrupt, cuts of connected scenes, everything very fast, but the movie was all cut from the series, so these limitations, and a lot has been suppressed, but the essence, despite being well compromised, is still present there, a good work, but like almost everyone about the mafia, it doesn't attract me enough...

Well sometimes it does make sense to check on the movies before I watch them. I would have tried to get my hands on the TV show this is based on or rather followed up on. Not that it doesn't work on its own! I'd argue it does, but then again, I cannot yet say how I would have felt having the background knowledge of the show beforehand.

Having said all that, it is interesting to see Chow Yun Fat in a younger version. Even in the Killer (the very first one I saw with him) and Hard Boiled he seemed more grown up than in this. Or maybe I'm a bit sentimental considering those movies. This one has quite some violence and quite a lot of story to pack into the running time. It still all makes sense, but it also is packed with almost no time to breathe (the viewer does not have that luxury)

There's probably some historical value to watching the Bund, since it more or less started Chow Yun Fat's career, and there might be a good story in there somewhere. But this movie isn't so much a movie as it is an entire TV series lopped into bite-sized pieces with a butcher knife and stitched together with barbed wire.

Essentially it seems to try and tell the entire story of the series it's based on (I say based on, but the movie is actually a compilation of scenes from that series, without any original footage that I can tell) in as few scenes as possible. Characters appear and disappear without explanation, musical cues cut out in strange ways, and major plot points seem to be leapfrogged in order to allow the movie to achieve it's brisk 100 minute length. I could follow the broader story but often didn't understand the details in any given scene, and any emotional impact it might have carried if told properly was entirely lost as I just tried to keep up.

It's possible that if seen in its original serial form it'd be worthwhile, though the production quality certainly doesn't live up to Hong Kong cinema of the time. But given the choice between seeing this movie and not seeing the Bund at all, I'd say the latter is the better option.

Also, shoutout to them using the intro to "Time" by Pink Floyd for suspenseful scenes. I somehow suspect they didn't have a license for that.