With Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby not due out until later this year, Chinese film The Last Tycoon is a little early for F. Scott Fitzgerald cash-ins. Not that Hong Kong multi-hypenate Wong Jing would be above such thing. With a resume as long as the Hume Highway, Wong has been known to churn films out quicker than almost any other director from the region.
one of the prolific Wong’s more polished films
A combination gangster/WWII/romance, The Last Tycoon is one of the prolific Wong’s more polished films, gathering veteran Hong Kong stars Chow Yun-Fat, Sammo Hung, and Francis Ng as well as showcasing younger Chinese stars like Huang Xiaoming, Monica Mok, and debuting beauty Feng Wenjuan.
The film begins in 1937 with a prosperous, cigar-smoking Cheng Daiqi (Chow Yun-Fat) contemplating his youth in Jiangsu Province where in 1907 he romanced a young chanteuse, Qiu (Feng Wenjuan), whose musical ambitions took her to Beijing, while Cheng’s being framed for a murder quickly spurred his departure for Shanghai.
In an ambitious flashforward, the young Cheng (Huang Xiaoming) arrives in China’s most cosmopolitan city, and at the front door of the luxurious Grand Shanghai Hotel where much of the drama (Da Shang Hai being the film’s Chinese title) transpires and looks up to see his more successful 1937 self (Chow) standing grandly at the balcony of the hotel’s penthouse. It is revealed through multiple flashbacks, that in between, Cheng has become an influential gangster and a person of some political power. The film’s romance comes back to the fore when his former beau (now played by Yolanda Yuan) visits the hotel with her political activist husband. Keeping his distance, Cheng protects them both from violent attacks without the husband’s knowledge. Meanwhile, Japanese forces soon to invade Shanghai are spearheaded by diplomatic Nishino (Kurata Yasuaki) who has a fondness for Chinese opera including an amorous eye for its star performers such as Qiu.
The knotty plot is further entangled by the men’s taste for ambitious and accommodating concubines, but with enough concentration even Chinese history novices should get through to the explosive climax without too much head-scratching. A strong structure manages to stylishly incorporate the finales of both Casablanca and The Lady of Shanghai into its storyline and yet the script by director Wong, Manfred Wong and Philip Lui, still audaciously goes its own way entirely for its own ending.
Told with verve and finesse, the film nevertheless has some rough – both narrative and visual – spots. A key example is the reunification of Cheng and Qiu during a Japanese air assault. All underlined by Chan Kwong-wing’s treacly and overly insistent score, this is preceded by a disproportionate stunt which nearly squashes the heroine with a streetcar and is immediately followed by a harmonious three-way meeting with Qiu’s husband that is just inexplicable. But as outrageous as all that sounds, for the most part the glossy and fast-moving The Last Tycoon works, deftly juggling melodrama and action. Unfortunately, it’s hard to shake the feeling that with a tad more care this could have been a much richer film. But then again, if it was too good, people might doubt Wong Jing made it at all.
