In Japanese-occupied Shanghai, four months before Pearl Harbor, an American spy (John Cusak) returns to the city to find one of his good friends murdered. While trying to solve the mystery of his friend’s death, he falls in love with a powerful Chinese woman and discovers secrets hidden by the US Government. This story is not particularly exciting, but I found the actors pretty good, especially Li Gong and Yun-Fat Chow. I was also interested in the depiction of life in Shanghai in the forties, when it was still an international settlement with a fascinating mixture of Chinese, Japanese, British, Americans, French and Germans. While the film does not quite achieve its goal of giving a real impression of life in Shanghai at the time, there are beautiful impressions of the Bund and of other landmark buildings. It’s all a bit black and white at times, but quite entertaining (if you manage to push aside the killings and the war, that is).
