Shanghai Triad

Not Chinese director Zhang Yimou's best by a long shot (To Live and Ju Dou are much better), his sixth film starring Gong Li is set in 1930's Shanghai where a young country boy gets caught up in an ugly love triangle when he's hired to be a personal servant to Xiao Jinbao (Li), a ganglord's moll/nightclub singer. Beautifully filmed, and stately paced (sometimes too much so), Yimou's latest suffers from making Li's character so unappealing that when the story takes its inevitable tragic turn near the end, the audience's sympathy lies more with the color and the lighting, not the flesh and blood characters. Still, even second-rate Yimou is better than many another director's best work. Recommended.