Shanghai Triad

There isn't a moment in Shanghai Triad that celebrates or revels in violence, and by movie's end, Zhang has portrayed the Shanghai underworld as a place of irredeemable evil. Read full review

Shanghai Triad concludes the sublime seven-movie collaboration of Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou and actress Gong Li with a bang worthy of the most jubilant New Year's Eve.

A great gangster film...Shanghai Triad is one of the lushest-looking, most stunningly photographed (by Lu Yue) films of the year, but its depiction of unabashed material splendor is instantly eclipsed by the natural beauty of this island retreat with its swaying pampas grass, magnificent skies and modest structures of simple beauty. Read full review

A feast of a film that goes on feeding you long after you've left the theater. [25 Dec 1995, p.83]

And, of course, the film's biggest selling point is the performance of China's reigning superstar, Gong Li. Playing a sexy, shrewd but strangely suicidal character who is a far cry from the stubborn courtesans and determined peasant women characters that made her famous, she's as enigmatic and irresistible as ever, and demonstrates once again that she is the Garbo of China. [21 Dec 1995]

However endlessly film makers around the world have told that story, Mr. Zhang reimagines it with immense grace and turns it into a deeply felt tragedy. Read full review

A deep, powerful and rivetingly complex study of Tienanmen - and, ironically, it's far more evenhanded in its account of the massacre that killed more than a thousand protesters than the Chinese government might suspect. Read full review

Triad oozes a confidence that carries the viewer almost without pause to its shocking climax and ironic close. Read full review

Imagine "The Godfather" through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy just in from the hinterlands of rural Jersey and his dad's pepper farm, and you have an idea of the originality, and the oddity, of the film. [16 Feb 1996]

The film represents a retreat from the explicitly political concerns of TO LIVE (which landed the director in serious trouble with P.R.C. authorities), but there's a distinct satirical subtext underlying Zhang's Chinese Gangland, a place of limitless greed, self-destructive ritual and fatal hubris. Read full review

Still, this is Zhang at his peak — twenty years before the horrors of “The Great Wall,” working with his muse (Gong Li will be seen next in Disney’s “Mulan”) and showing off a China that the Communist oligarchs would eventually come to emulate — of Western style luxury and opulence, and the casual, business-as-usual corruption that helps one acquire it. Read full review

Also starring: the landscape, beautifully photographed by cinematographer Lu Yue. The look is rosily glamorous in sophisticated Shanghai, and mistily poetic on the quiet island to which the mobster and his party escape. Read full review

With its underworld violence and straightforward narrative, Shanghai Triad may be Zhang's most accessible film to date. It is not, however, his best work, having neither the epic scope of To Live nor the quiet emotional power of Raise the Red Lantern. Yet there is still much to like about Shanghai Triad, not the least of which is the production's gorgeous look (credit the director and his cinematographer, Li Xiao). Shanghai Triad overflows with memorable imagery and atmosphere. And, as this film verifies, a weak entry by Zhang is often far more engrossing than a strong entry by many other directors. Read full review

It's a strong film, but apart from its stunning images, it doesn't linger in your mind's eye the way you would like it to. Read full review

This movie is not as intricately rewarding as Zhang's others. But because it is so Westernized, it could do even better at the box office. [21 Dec 1995, p.60]

Gingerly paced and meditative, Shanghai Triad isn't as lyrical as some of Zhang's other films, but its hauntingly tragic ending and the bittersweet relationship at its core are as powerful as anything in this director's impressive body of work. [16 Feb 1996, p.7G]

An intense story about an all-powerful Chinese crime lord and his extended family. [26 Jan 1996]

Unfortunately, with its faintly uneven pacing and straggling structure, the film lacks depth or narrative economy. That said, Zhang's use of colour is as vivid as ever, his stylised depiction of violence is mostly effective, and Gong Li is gloriously watchable. Read full review

A poetic but perplexing tale of a mob moll's redemption. Read full review

Shanghai Triad doesn't feel up to Zhang's usual standards. Read full review

His movie is only partly satisfying. [23 Feb 1996]

There are two basic weaknesses. One is that the boy supplies the point of view, and yet the story is not about him, so instead of identifying with him, we are simply frustrated in our wish to see more than he can see. The other problem is that Gong Li's character is thoroughly unlikable. Read full review

The film itself never felt quite so densely plotted as Yimou apparently had hoped. Read full review

Even the excellent Gong has a tough time trying to twist her character into a tragic heroine, while the utter despair to which sympathetic characters are condemned suggests a significant point in Zhang's career, but does nothing to relieve the viewer's ennui. Read full review

But this whore-and-the-innocent friendship, set in Shanghai during the 1930s, is too trite to pull us in. And the gangster scenario around it (Bi Feiyu wrote the script) is similarly unconvincing. Read full review