07-30-2018, 08:57 PM
This featured Harry Shum Jr from Glee, Ron Yuan from Marco Polo, and Eugenia Yuan, daughter of the venerated Cheng Pei Pei and dating a friend of mine right now. Scorsese produced, it's a Chinese gangster flick set in NY in the mid 90s, based on a true story (photos of the real survivors and their fates with the end credits). It's gritty, even sadistic. Gratuitous torture and rape, lots of brutality and bullets to the head. It's somewhat of a Scarface story - Chinese illegal immigrant kids get sucked into a ruthless gang but they don't become kingpins, just thugs in a violent seedy world. Everyone turns in decent performances but its so heavy-handed with its harshness and struggles to be artsy with it, and then shocking. Didn't really enjoy it in the end and wouldn't recommend it unless you're really into Asian gangster flicks, in which case this is amusing because it's a Hollywood take on it. There's a strong anti-immigration message which might not have been so prominent when it was made, but now, given the current immigration climate, is all I could see.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse