Shanghai Triad

Shanghai Triad is a Chinese film from 1995. It takes place over seven days in the 1930s. The story begins as a boy, Shuisheng is a sent to work as a servant for a mob boss. He then gets assigned to serve Jinbao, a singer and the girlfriend of the mob boss. Shuisheng becomes the only person she can talk to openly. As his relationship with her is not motivated by power or greed. The whole film basically just chronicles Shuisheng's arrival to work for the Boss, his conflicted emotions for Jinbao , an attempt to kill the mob bass, Tang, and then fleeing to an island safe house.
A running theme of this film was the dangers of the condition of China. It is clearly ruined by dangerous, powerful, greedy men. They will pretty much kill anyone in their way or anyone who knows too much about their operation. Jinbao tells Shuisheng to start a shop and get out of Shanghai as soon as possible. She knows it’s no good and the people in her life are dangerous. After going to the safehouse, the film ends with a return to Shanghai. Shuisheng might be stuck there as he gets to see first hand what Jinbao was talking about in the beginning.

I would say this was a decent film. As a gangster film, it isn’t like the rest. There isn’t a whole lot of violence and it deals mostly with the character of a young boy. Shuisheng is used to represent the audience. Everything that takes place is seen through the eyes of Shuisheng. There are first person camera shots where we see events open up from the perspective of Shuisheng. It is as if the audience is in his position as we are finding out everything going on the same time he does. I felt the boy who played Shuisheng was a little emotionless in is acting. Everyone else was pretty good and natural. However, the boy was a little stiff. I liked the growing relationship between Jinbao and Shuisheng and Jinbao’s relationship with the young girl, Ajiao. I also enjoyed the ending of the film as it held my interest and it wasn’t particularly happy. The film then ends with Shuisheng tied to the sails of the ship as it sails back to Shanghai. The silver coins that Jinbao gave him to start a shop and get away from Shanghai have fell out of his pocket and into the ocean. The mob boss thinks tying him up upside down like training a dog. Ajiao will be brought up to be the next Jinbao. The future doesn’t look too bright for both Jinbao and Ajiao. I feel like there could be another film showing us what happened to these characters 20 years later.