Shanghai

This film is about the lives of several spies from America and China in the turbulent Shanghai in the 1940's.

"Shanghai" is a mesmerising film that successfully recreates the 1940's feel of Shanghai. The film is engaging throughout, with no unnecessary scenes. It is also straightforward and easily understandable, which is a rarity for spy dramas. It is also captivating, as it beautifully captures the stress of people living deceitful lives, not knowing who to trust, without any back up. Even your best friend can be someone entirely different, befriending you only for intelligence.

Gong Li is great in "Shanghai", she radiates beauty and charm, and yet at the same time her extraordinary elegance seems to be begging for pity and mercy. She is rightly cast for her role.

Shanghai takes place just before Japan entered the World War Two. Paul Soames (John Cusack) comes to China to look for his friend who, like him, worked for the American intelligence effort. From that basic setting we end up getting a good mystery thriller, with all the usual good stuff. Glamorous women, elegant locations, the looming threat of war, betrayals, reveals, backstabbing and more.

One of the film's strengths are its actors. I haven't seen Cusack in anything for a while, but he's still in great shape and gives a good performance as your typical silent neo-noir investigator hero. Li Gong is also very good as Anna Lan-Ting, the resident femme fatale.

Truth be told, I kind of wish the script was a bit better so that these people could have really stretched their wings. As it is, it's not bad, but it's not really all that original either. You can figure out the mystery pretty early if you know anything about history, the biggest twist when it comes to characters also comes near the beginning, none of the romance subplots really surprise and as a whole, while I was entertained, I wasn't really that thrilled.

Shanghai is a good film to check out if you're a fan of wartime period pieces and want to see one that, for a change, doesn't take place in Western Europe. It has great actors, a decent script, excellent production values and a tight enough pacing to make up for its unoriginality.

This movie captures that period of 30's Shanghai quite well. Well I wouldn't be the best person to judge considering I know little about that time, but from what I had seen in this film, it was very intriguing.

This espionage/war film gets your attention. The plot is not too complicated, has a nice pace, good performances and an international cast. John Cusack is decent in this role, Gong Li is gorgeous as ever and her English seems to have improved. She captures the screen with her grace and beauty, but also a believable performance. Chow Yun Fat is equally as good. Ken Watanabe - a good performance though he really needs to work more on making his accent understandable as I still have a little trouble with him, but nevertheless makes a good icy character.

The last act creates the suspense very well, though I'll have to admit, though I found the ending dramatic and decent, it might have been more interesting if they actually filmed what happened instead of doing the voice-over, but hey I guess budget constraints and time can get in the way, so I'm alright with it I suppose.

This is a visual feast. It is good to see many actors of different nationalities blend in for what is a cross country story. Japan/China/Germany. Franka Potente has a role here too, which I enjoyed as well.

The only problem with the film, though it wasn't it's fault, was that the version I watched did not have English subtitles when they were talking in Chinese. At first, I thought that this was part of the movie, as you weren't meant to understand it, but there are important scenes near the end where I had no clue what they were saying. It didn't mean I didn't get the rest of the plot or what was happening, but that could have given me a bit more to work with and more juice as well. Oh well, it's not their fault.

This is an enjoyable movie, and it captures that sense of mystery, mistrust, betrayal and fear that you experience during an espionage/war film. Though this isn't essentially a war film in that it's main focus is about blowing up people etc, it is about the struggle of invasion and the effects of it. Recommended.

I hope it gets a wider release in the US and here in Australia because it is a good film.

This is a fascinating movie in many ways, not least for its partially successful elucidation of a particularly dark period in Shanghai's colourful history. However, "Shanghai" comes across all too often as a confused mish-mash of other movies - Casablanca and The Third Man both spring rather too readily to mind - while offering little of its own in the way of an original plot or any intriguing character arcs.

Solid acting work all 'round. Franka Potente is probably the most watchable of the actors here, despite being less toothsome than Gong Li (who looks every bit her age in this movie but is still ravishingly attractive).

There are a few intriguing glimpses of Shanghai as it might have been in the early 40s, including one particularly well-recreated crane shot of the Bund - although I have to say the ships look just a tad too close to the imposing British-built buildings lining that famous boulevard. There's another shot from inside the Cusack character's hotel room showing a few of Shanghai's classic buildings through the window, clearly digitally composited as those particular buildings could never have been viewed that way from the one vantage point.

However, it seems (judging from the credits) that the vast majority of this movie was shot in Thailand, and thus most of the street scenes and interiors are fairly generic and not particularly evocative of Shanghai's history. For a much better rendition of this you need to have a look at Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution" which treads similar territory (Shanghai, spies, Japanese occupation etc) with much more style.

Indeed I find myself wondering why this movie was made at all, given that pretty much 100% of its thematic territory had been covered by Lee's movie just a couple of years before, and with considerably more chutzpah.

Nevertheless...if you're a fan of any of these actors, it's worth a look.

The subject matter is interesting. There is suspense and action and romance. Too bad it didn't get a bigger box office release and reception. Some slight imperfections are there.

The cast is good. All top notch Asian actors. Chow and Watanabe add stature. Gong Li is alluring if a little older. Cusack is a bit goofy looking but blends in to the scenes well. Heard Johnny Depp was interested probably would have been worse.

The sets are bit too theatrical and lacked a little on location feel.

The story is feel good old fashioned adventure romance and not irritating. Sometimes it was hard to catch some of the dialog and because of that got a bit lost.

Overall worth watching.