“Crime drama has rarely been this gorgeously alluring – or this brutal.”
— Melissa Pierson, Entertainment Weekly
“However endlessly film makers around the world have told [this] story,
Mr. Zhang reimagines it with immense grace and turns it into a deeply felt tragedy… Gong Li’s astonishing performance summons all the tawdriness,
evil and eventual dignity this story demands.”
— Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“Compelling and beautifully made — it was shot in dreamlike soft focus
by award- winning cinematographer Lu Yue — “Shanghai Triad” shows
an enclosed, separate world that looks incredibly plush and inviting,
almost like a storybook palace, but of course is laced with perils.”
— Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle
SYNOPSIS
Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee, SHANGHAI TRIAD is a thrilling and sumptuously stylized potboiler about the Chinese criminal underworld of the 1930’s from legendary director Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern, House of Flying Daggers).
Hired to be a servant to pampered nightclub singer and mob moll Xiao Jinbao (Gong Li, Ju Dou, Farewell My Concubine), naive teenager Shuisheng (Wang Xiaoxiao) is thrust into the glamorous and deadly demimonde of Shanghai’s crime syndicates. Over the course of seven days, Shuisheng observes mounting tensions as triad boss Tang begins to suspect traitors amongst his ranks and rivals for Xiao Jinbao’s affections. Zhang’s inventive take on the gangster film is “assured and attention-grabbing” (Variety) and Gong’s central performance, “a portrait of a capricious and indulgent woman who gains depth as we watch her — is one of her finest” (Chicago Tribune).
