Cheng, a young man who is set up by the chief of police, must leave the life he knows and Qiu, the woman he loves, to start again. After escaping prison Cheng quickly and violently moves his way up the ladder of Shanghais criminal underworld to become on the most powerful mob bosses in Shanghais history. But fame and notoriety take their toll when Cheng finds himself stuck between the looming Japanese army and the scheming local secret service. Matters are only made worse when he bumps into the love of his life QIU, along with her writer husband. Will love re-kindle in the dusk of an era?
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The story has been recorded in other posts so I won't repeat here.Wong Jing is mixing genres again. This time he combines pieces of the Godfather, Casablanca, and Inglorious Basterds all into one film. And as with most things that you throw into a blender, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's just a confused mess.The early part with his entry into mob world is pretty formulaic HK gangster style. We've got the mob guy with a heart of gold (Chow telling his cronies to stop the prostitution racket but keep up the gambling dens). We've got his rapid ascension in the ranks, the sworn brotherhood to the head guy (Sammo Hung who looks really obese now) and his loyalty to those around him.then comes the Casablanca story... lost love. tragic romance. a reappearance of his young love who is now married to someone who's a freedom fighter of some sort. They even ripped off the airplane scene at the end. C'mon Wong Jing... did you just copy/paste that into your script? And of course the end is with Inglorious Basterd style massive slaughterfest of the bad guys as they're trapped in a theatre. Again. More copy/paste.I love Sammo Hung and Chow Yun Fat. But the story was too derivative. The scenes were too overtly ripped off from other movies which are so famous and so highly regarded that it's hard not to see the cheap knockoff The Last Tycoon really is. In fact - the best parts of Last Tycoon are from Casablanca.When is a homage really just a ripoff??? In this case I'm glad I didn't have to pay to watch this one.Conclusion: It looks great (nice cinematography). It's acting is good. But the stories and scenes obviously belong to better movies. All that was missing was a piano player named Sam.5/10
"Even if your battalion can take Shanghai in one day, they will never ever find you again." In the 1930's Shanghai was full of ruthless gangsters. Working his way to the top of the criminal underworld Cheng(Yon-Fat) he thinks he is untouchable. When he finds himself stuck in the middle of the invading Japanese army and the secret service he realizes he has more enemies then he thought and is left on his own. I was looking forward to this movie quite a bit. While I am not a huge foreign movie fan I am a big fan of the gangster genre. This movie was a little slow moving but still worth seeing. Being a foreign movie 80% of people will not watch so this won't be a long one but the best way to convince people to see it is to go generic. This movie is a mix of a war movie and The Godfather as directed by Quentin Tarantino. If that won't help you then I don't know what else to say. Overall, little slow but worth watching. I did like it. I say B-.
Cheng Daqi (played as a young man by Huang Xiaoming and as an older man by the legendary Chow Yun-Fat) is a village boy in 1913 China who loves Ye Zhiqiu (Feng Wenjuan), an aspiring opera performer. A blunder on Daqi's part lands him on death row, where he is taken under the wing of Mao Zai (Francis Ng), who subsequently brings him to Shanghai, where Daqi signs up with Hong Shouting (Sammo Hung), the town's leading gangster. Fast forward 24 years and it's 1937, and Daqi is himself a renowned gangster, blood brother of Hong; he is married to the lovely Bao (Monika Mok), but when Zhiqiu comes to town with her husband, the old sparks begin to fly again. But this is 1937, and the Japanese Imperial Army has designs on Shanghai, and all of China.... Well. The above synopsis only covers a part of the very complicated story of "The Last Tycoon," and I wasn't always certain about who was who and what was going on; that said, it's a wild and action-packed ride – knife fights (with umbrellas), gun fights, fighter jets dropping bombs, things blowing up real good, all pushed up to 11. Getting to see Chow Yun-Fat get back to his filmic roots, all guns blazing and tenderness toward the women in his life, is a real treat, and of course, the anti-heroic, good bad guy is a wonderful role for him. I'm not sure that I understood everything that went on, but I enjoyed it to bits!
<<< Spoilers ahead, please don't read if you intend to watch the movie without any prior knowledge of the plot>>>I had the good fortune to watch this in Australia in an actual cinema, a treat for a country that rarely screens Asian movies. It was a particularly worthwhile experience as the movie was thoroughly enjoyable.The screenplay is well written, using a classic hero's journey plot contained within a "rags to riches" story of our protagonist, Cheng Daiqi (Chow Yun Fat). Viewers of western films may recognise some similarities to seminal gangster movies like Scarface and Godfather. Interspersed through this main plot line, the film's writers (Jing Wong, Manfred & Philip Lui) skillfully weave related Shakespearean subplots of power, romance, lust, betrayal, family, loyalty and patriotism. The plot travels at a comfortable pace and is made more interesting by a clever story telling method that jumps the audience through non-linear time periods during the first part of the movie to paint a beautiful back story for the film's finale.The casting director should be recognised on his/her own accord for assembling a cast that could deliver on the story. It is a little unfair to single out any specific actors given the aggregate stellar performance, but if pushed, Chow Yun Fat (Cheng Daiqi) and Huang Xiaoming (young Cheng Daiqi) are near faultless in their respective performances. Chow Yun Fat once again demonstrates his acting prowess, moving into that rare stratosphere of actors whom directors can point a camera at, and with just a close-up facial shot and no spoken lines, let the actor's eyes emotionally engage the audience. Perhaps as an indirect homage to Chow Yun Fat's good looks in his younger days, a rather handsome actor plays young Cheng Daiqi. Huang Xiaoming is great in this role, especially in the latter parts of Daiqi's rise in status, exuding a quiet confidence and poise that explain Daiqi's actions in the later parts of the movie. No commentary on the actors in the movie can be concluded without a mention of the women cast in this film, i.e. Daiqi's and Shouting's wives and lovers. Their beauty almost jumps off the screen, and is present in both their young and older guises. The respective wives of the two gangster brothers played their loyal roles beautifully to reveal a touch of vulnerability and humanity in their underworld husbands, hinting at the juxtaposition of power in these families.The film was shot beautifully and is accompanied by beautiful songs in its soundtrack. No small amount of attention went into the costumes as the cast were dressed in fantastic period pieces to match the movie's early 20th century setting. Although not quite matching the grandeur and realism of war scenes shot in Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, great care was evident in simulating the chaos of Shanghai's aerial bombing.This film is well worth watching and is a showcase for Jing Wong's movie directing and Chow Yun Fat's abilities as a thespian. It serves as further evidence of Asian cinema to deliver on movies that arouse our intellectual and visual senses.
