Asian Movie Review: The Last Tycoon (大上海, 2012)

I should have posted this earlier!  Three days ago I was lucky enough to attend the World Premiere for the new film "The Last Tycoon" starring Chow Yun-Fat, Huang Xiaoming, Francis Ng and Sammo Hung.  Directed by HK Film Legend Wong Jing and produced by Andrew Lau (of Infernal Affairs fame).

Its basically a gangster drama set in old Shanghai (~1907-1937),  revisiting territory from some of Chow's most famous early role in "The Bund", the 1980 TV drama that made him a household name in Hong Kong. 

Actually Chow and Huang Xiaoming play different aged version of the same character, Cheng Daqi, an ambitious young scrappy country kid who fights his way to the top of the Shanghai underworld.  Huang also starred in a 2007 remake of The Bund,  so its appropriate to combine the two of them into one movie.

As you can imagine the film skips back and forth between the activities of older Cheng and younger Cheng (filling in the blanks on how we got where he is and how the other characters around him have played a part in that background. 

  For those who are looking for some throwback Chow Yun-Fat, i think you'll be pleased with this movie, there's actually a lot of gun play between CYF and Huang Xiaoming's scenes...   High body counts abound between drama, suspense and double crosses.Overall the film is pretty high budget and pretty epic in scale, as you can imagine.  But the flip side of that is that it was a bit confusing to me because there are a lot of characters (gangsters, military guys, their wives, their mistresses, long lost first girl friends, etc.... after a while, especially once they all switch off with eachother, its hard to keep track of who's who).

Overall i'll give it a solid 7/10.  You may complain the plot is a bit overly complex or the script jump arounds too much, but hey, its Chow Yun-fat shooting people with .45s!  And also a long overdue reminder that Wong Jing can do a good movie without silly comedy or T & A!