SHANGHAI GRAND (Xin Shang Hai Tan)
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Sound format: Dolby Stereo
In wartime Shanghai, a Taiwanese revolutionary (Leslie Cheung) and an ambitious gangster (Andy Lau) forge a criminal empire within the city's underworld, but they're torn apart by a rival gangster's beautiful daughter (Ning Jing).
Director Poon Man-kit scores a bullseye with this uncompromising wartime thriller, a big-screen version of the 1980 TV drama "Shanghai Bund" (which, amongst other things, established Chow Yun-fat as a major star throughout SE Asia), co-financed by Win's Entertainment and Tsui Hark's Film Workshop. Nostalgic, romantic and primed to the max, the film's melodramatic plot line is reinforced by a number of eye-popping set-pieces, laced with unexpected savagery. Like many of his contemporaries, Poon - who helmed the equally brutal TO BE NUMBER ONE in 1991 - finds poetry in images of violence (such as Cheung standing in a shower of blood beneath a cage where his friends have been machine-gunned to death), and these highlights are directed with consummate cinematic precision.
Beautifully designed by Bruce Yu, and photographed by world-class cinematographer Poon Hang-sang on sets constructed for Chen Kaige's TEMPTRESS MOON (1996), SHANGHAI GRAND has the look and feel of a flamboyant, pumped-up Warner Bros. melodrama of the 1930's and 40's, toplined by two of the most beautiful actors working in Hong Kong at the time (Lau and Cheung make a formidable team in one of their few on-screen pairings). Mainland actress Ning is miscast in an underwritten role, and she's completely sidelined by Amanda Lee as a seductive - but ruthless - killer who enjoys torturing her victims to death. Her demise, when it comes, is as spectacular as it is welcome!
Poon's script (co-written by Sandy Shaw and Matt Chow) focuses chiefly on the friendship which unites - and eventually destroys - the two main characters, building to one of the most sensational finales this reviewer has ever seen: Poon stages the breathtaking climactic shoot-out during raucous New Year's Eve celebrations in the vicinity of a crowded bar-room, and he uses the Dolby soundtrack as ironic counterpoint to the on-screen drama. In fact, the movie reaches its emotional summit during this extraordinary sequence when one of the characters falls victim to a dreadful misunderstanding, culminating in a moment of sublime cinematic tragedy that elevates SHANGHAI GRAND to the level of greatness. It takes enormous talent (and courage) for any filmmaker to convey so much heartbreak and heroism whilst simultaneously igniting the screen with so much action! Fans of HK cinema won't be disappointed by this superlative offering.
(Cantonese dialogue)
