Shanghai Reviews

From the moment I heard about this movie, I became quite intrigued and I was quite eager to check it out, even though it didn't get much love and was barely seen when it was released. Indeed, personally, I always had a weak spot for those good old vintage exotic spy flicks with a dash of film noir. Eventually, this one had a terrific mood and Hafstrom managed to create a believable and fascinating dark and ominous city. Unfortunately, even though the story was not bad, it was still pretty weak, especially the underwhelming and predictable love story involving John Cusack and Gong Li (the way he completely spills the beans to her towards the end was also completely unbelievable). Finally, even though most of the cast (Gong Li, Chow Yun-Fat, Ken Watanabe, David Morse, Franka Potente, David Morse, Rinko Kikuchi) was pretty flawless and perfect for their parts, I thought that John Cusack was terribly miscast and really unconvincing as a supposedly smooth and lethal spy. Anyway, to conclude, the whole thing had some potential, it looked really great, and in spite of its flaws, I still think it is worth a look but there is no denying that it could or should have been much better.