Tang tan 1900

At times this is actually quite a fun spoof along the lines of "Sherlock Holmes" meets "Charlie Chan" by way of "High Noon" but for the most part it's a mess of a film that goes on for far too long. With the Manchu court facing the great powers we saw in "55 Days at Peking" (1963) the Empress Dowager dispatches her finest officer to San Francisco to track down a traitor. As it happens, the Holmesian "Fu" (Haoran Liu) is also in that very city on a quest for the killer of the daughter of senator "Grant" (John Cusack). Quite swiftly his investigation and the imperial mission start to overlap as the enthusiastic "Fu" and his newfound spiritual Indian guide "Gui" (Baoqiang Wang) discover that the prime suspect in the killing (Steven Zhang) is the son of local entrepreneur "Bai" (Chow Yun-Fat) and that the senator is using this to stir anti-Chinese sentiment to the point where he can force them out and seize their property. What now ensues delivers a series of rather randomly assembled escapades that mix murder mystery with western with romance and add a good dose of skullduggery to boot as they try to prove the young "Bai" was framed. Fu and Wang make for a decent enough double act at times, but the story loses it's way way too often and after a while the characterisations - especially "Bai" and "Grant" become light-weight and strained parodies. Fortunately, after about two hours, auteur Sicheng Chen must have felt he was running out of file space and so decided he'd better wrap things up - and for that last quarter of an hour the story knits together things we knew with things we didn't and presents us with a rather feeble denouement that did sort of suggest that there could be more adventures to come for the likeable "Gui" and "Fu". What is potent is the closing statement from the elder "Bai" about remembering the importance of immigrant labour in establishing a country that was all too quick to shun that working community later when it suited it, but it's made in a cack-handed and over-the-top fashion and drowned out by an overpowering score and thus loses much of an impact that might actually resonate in an USA that's still unsure how to recognise those who do/did the work but perhaps didn't all have the same/right skin colour or paperwork. It has it's moments, just nowhere near enough of them.

Though I had high expectations for this movie for being much spoiled of how great it is, I was still pleasantly surprised by Detective Chinatown 1900. As a Chinese immigrant, I'm proud that it's a mainland Chinese director who decided to touch upon topics of immigrant laborers, the Yellow Peril, and the Chinese Exclusionary Act, and further at how well this part of history is adopted, recreated, and incorporated with the overall storyline of the movie --- as it goes, Chen Sicheng is a true merchant in terms of selecting film subjects. Chow Yun-Fat gives hell of a performance for a multilayered Chinese-American hero: a loving father, an approachable elder, a cunning diplomat, and an authoritative (mob) leader. Bai's speech at the court is a rare scene of cultural outcry that struck me personally and inspired new reflections.

Notice how I never mentioned the "detective" bit of the movie? The crime/investigation storyline is decent but not amazing compared to the rest of the franchise, complexity and portrayal wise. Some parts of the murder even took me out in terms of the absurdity and logistics, which leads me to question if the director has a thing with pregnant women (cue his last film Lost in the Stars).

Overall, enjoyable comedy, ambitious multi-storylines, and great performances across the board. Keep in mind, however, that this film is targeted toward the Chinese market/audiences and it's meant to educate, provoke, and moralize, perhaps in a way you might not agree with.

It only seems right to address the elephant in the room when setting a movie in a California Chinatown in the 1900s. Chinese Exclusion Act, working conditions for Chinese labourers who built the transcontinental, etc. All seem relevant and could create a very interesting background if done correctly. Detective Chinatown 1900 beats these over the heads of the audience to the point it's out of place. I think it's more effective to give the audience room to ponder these topics.

When the movie isn't focusing on those travesties or diving into more modern day nationalistic propaganda, it's still weaker as a buddy cop movie than any of the trilogy save a few action scenes.

Despite a broad brush of very serious subjects the movie is trying to deal with. The Magical Native American man/ a certain idea of Native Americans is resurrected from the Hollywood golden age of cowboy movies, in order to immediately be subverted, a multilayer plot gives even the tiniest characters some closure by the end, and the intrigue remains whole until the very end of the movie, even though it leans more on the side of a gory comedy rather than an investigative drama, or maybe a mix of the two, but, I guess such is life itself as well.

This all ends with an instructive exchange, a sort of a meta-dialogue, between two secondary characters, tycoons, talking about taking ascendance in the world through "power wields everything and, money, wields power" , and indeed , this movie is in of itsellf, showing that the Chinese movie studios can indeed take ascendance as a new, welcome tool of diversifying the sources of power in this world, through their ability of making fun movies which can get the money needed for that.

While Detective Chinatown 1900 tries to blend comedy with a dark chapter of history, its tonal imbalance weakens the overall experience. The film relies too much on exposition rather than strong storytelling, making its mystery feel contrived and overly reliant on coincidences. Comedy feels misplaced given the heavy subject matter, and while the cast delivers solid performances, the writing struggles to treat its audience with intelligence. A more serious approach, with only minimal humor, would have made for a much stronger film. Ultimately, it's a forgettable entry that fails to leave a lasting impact.