JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

tieman64 Zhang Yimou directed "Raise the Red Lantern" in 1991. That film saw an impoverished young woman (Gong Li) forced to marry a nobleman with multiple wives. Slowly she loses both her mind and humanity, all in the name of financial necessity.Yimou's "Shanghai Triad" tells a similar tale. Also starring Gong Li, the film is set in 1930s Shanghai. Here a fourteen year old boy, Shuisheng, is forced to work for Bijou (Gong Li), a woman who is herself forced to work for Tang, a powerful crime lord. But whilst "Lantern" dealt with clear lines of exploitation, "Triad" is much more amorphous. Shuisheng, for example, finds himself beholden to Tang and Bijou, but also willingly gives himself to them. Likewise, Bijou may be a virtual prisoner and sex slave, but she also enjoys the perks of being Tang's mistress, and routinely uses her power to bully anyone she can, including Shuisheng."Shanghai Triad" belongs to the "gangster genre", but dodges all the genre's clichés and conventions. It, unusual for the genre, also focuses on women and children; the victims of the gang's hierarchal structure. The film then climaxes with a powerful final act in which Bijou reveals herself to have been working with a rival gang-lord to usurp Tang. Ostracized on remote island, she then meets a peasant child, a girl who will henceforth be groomed by Tang to replace Bijou. With sequences like this, "Triad" evokes the best of Shakespeare, Yimou watching as grand cycles repeat themselves, King's attempting to dethroning kings, and little boys and girls made coarse by violence."Shanghai Triad" isn't as good as Yimou's best films, but it boasts a powerful climax and Gongi Li in another touching role (she at times evokes Marlene Dietrichish). Yimou's aesthetic is customarily lush. This was the last of eight collaborations between he and Gong Li, most of which featured her as a victim of all-powerful patriarchal figures.7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.

jandesimpson SPOILER insofar as final scene is mentioned.Once upon a time there was an exciting young director from China, Zhang Yimou, who dazzled us with lush colourful melodramas ("Ju Dou" and "Raise the Red Lantern"), glorious "soap", charting family travails throughout turbulent modern history ("To Live") and a type of social realism where you could almost smell the difference between countryside and city ("The Story of Qui Ju" and "Not One Less"). What became of him? He seems to have fallen victim to the seduction of the big budget martial arts genre ("Hero" and "Curse of the Golden Flower"). I could not but lament this on returning recently to one of the lesser known but nevertheless rewarding works of his earlier period, "Shanghai Triad". What he once did was often quite remarkable. Although on the surface the plot reads just like another gangster movie with feuding gangs fighting for supremacy in drug ridden 1930's Shanghai, what raises it to a higher level is that we observe and try to make sense of the nefarious goings-on through the eyes of a 14 year old boy. The opening shot just after the start of the credits is a closeup of Shuisheng who has just arrived in the city with his uncle to be placed as the servant to the mistress of their Tang relative who is "Boss" of the most powerful gangster clan around. From then on the boy is seldom away from the action which includes all sorts of murderous deeds. It's quite plain that he is just as bewildered as we are, a fact emphasised by the continual return to his closeup with those quizzical staring eyes. Much has been written about the brilliance of Gong Li's performance as Bijou, the "Boss's mistress, but for me this is the boy's film as the sense of audience identification with him is so complete. We even see his view of the world upside down in the final shots when he is trussed up and suspended from a pole as a punishment. The first half of the film set in the city moves at a furious pace, brilliant camera-work emphasising reds and the smoky atmosphere of the cabaret where Bijou performs. Thereafter the action moves to a remote river island where the main protagonists take refuge from those about to get them. Somehow this second half with its more leisurely tempo does not quite maintain the bravura of what has gone before, but who to complain after so much excitement. An imperfect work perhaps but one whose atmosphere is conveyed with superb visual imagination.

Rupert17 Shanghai Triad never gains momentum from a slow start and languid pacing until it eventually fizzles out.Gong Li looks superb and director Zhang Yimou's attention to detail and stylistic conceits never fail to impress. But the plot is overly simplistic and the characters never rise above a narrative bogged down with one dimensional characters and clichéd situations. You get the feeling Yimou was ready for something different in his career and Gong Li had played one too many parts under his direction.That said, it is entertaining without ever attaining the high standards of previous collaborations.

nikhil7179 Shanghai Triad has an interesting MO. It is really a socio-historical commentary masquerading as a coming of age story masquerading as a Gangster Film.Yimou makes bold storytelling choices - using the servant boy of a gang lord's mistress as the unlikely protagonist - shifting the setting of the film suddenly from bustling urban Shanghai to the peaceful Chinese Countryside.The risk taking pays off - it is what separates Triad from generic Hollywood tripe.Rather than some sort of high-handed morality play or costume melodrama, Yimou uses the story to illustrate the corruption of innocence, shifting loyalties and the endless struggle for power and dominance.Yimou purposely subverts our expectations of the genre picture by denying any form of release - any false catharsis/closure.The protagonist/viewer can only watch helplessly from the sidelines as the cycle of violence and exploitation continues.This device will prove undoubtedly frustrating to a Hollywood Audience and I commend him for it.