IMDb user comments for
Yao a yao yao dao waipo qiao (1995)

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24 comments in total

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11 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
A Simple Beautifully Told Story, 28 July 2004
Author: trpdean from New York, New York

This is a fine movie - wonderfully acted, beautifully shot, quite simple. Without being heavy-handed, one comes to sense the presence of real evil that tempts and corrupts and destroys. It's a little slow at times because the story is so simple - yet the slowness and simplicity does allow the messages of the movie to hit home. Something else I like is that the protagonist boy is not made to be cute or winning - he just is who he is - largely an observer but sometimes acting with generosity and sometimes with contempt.

Much has been said by others about the beautiful cinematography and that's certainly true - but I'm also struck by the amazing work of those who constructed or chose the sets, costumes, background characters - they were quite memorable. What a star in Gong Li, and what a director!

I don't agree with those who contrast this with American movies - surely we feel the same evil in watching either version of Scarface or The Petrified Forest or The Road to Perdition.

In fact, I would say this movie is most like The Road to Perdition of any I've seen - not in its story particularly but in its tone, its simplicity, its contrasts of character, its cinematography.

This is also a good movie for those who say they don't like foreign movies - you'll like this one.

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11 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
A stunner in every respect, 23 January 2004

Author: dr_foreman

Here's something you don't see every day - a mobster movie that focuses on the evil of criminals, instead of their coolness. "Shanghai Triad" shows you how mob violence destroys the life of a gangster's moll and endangers her innocent, fresh-from-the-country servant. It's exactly the kind of story you wouldn't see in a Hollywood movie - which is, I suppose, why we watch this weird foreign stuff!

Gong Li is, as ever, forceful and compelling, with a role that's infinitely more interesting than what America's "lead" actresses usually get. She's very glamorous here, and totally unlike the peasant characters she played in "To Live" and several other films. What a wonderful, versatile actress.

The film's other strengths include gorgeous, award-winning cinematography, interesting point-of-view shots, and an effective shift from an urban to a country setting that's pulled off very smoothly. It's a shame that this is the last film that director Zhang Yimou and Gong Li made together, but at least it caps off their collaboration on a high note.

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12 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Story Can''t Live Up To Great Visuals, 23 July 2006

Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States

The big plus here is in the visual department It is gorgeously filmed with deep, rich colors.

The story isn't that much. You keep excepting it to get better. It holds that promise but doesn't deliver until the ending, which has a neat no-nonsense twist. I really liked and admired that ending and wish more movies had realistic finishes like this.

Gong Li, who stars in here, plays a character that is interesting for the first half of the film but her spoiled-brat routine gets annoying after awhile. The main gangster, however, is an interesting guy throughout.

I've watched this twice and, frankly, expected more both times.

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Visually outstanding, 14 June 2003

Author: Simon Booth from UK

A young boy is brought to 1930's Shanghai from the countryside to be the manservant of a gang boss's mistress. The mistress (Gong Li) is a glamourous nightclub singer and a royal bitch. Soon after he arrives, the boy is witness to a power play in the underworld that results in the uncovering of lots of treachery and quite a bit of violence.

It's a nicely constructed story with good acting from everybody involved. It's fairly straightforward, but satisfying, and seeing the gang land activity from the perspectives of two outsiders makes it all the more interesting.

SHANGHAI TRIAD became my favourite Zhang Yimou film when I saw it some years ago, for the simple reason that it was one of the most beautiful films I'd seen. The production design, costumes, lighting and camerawork are all quite remarkable - creating stunning images from the opulence of Shanghai's nightclubs and mansions to the simplicity of the rural island where the second half of the film takes place.

Unfortunately, the R1 DVD fails to do the film justice. The colours are far too subdued, giving the film a rather lifeless look, and the demon of the digital age, Edge Enhancement, rears its ugly head again. The result looks rather like a VHS transfer, but I'd swear in court that the film looked a lot better on my UK VHS copy (mainly because of the colours). Poor Zhang Yimou, he hardly ever seems to get good representation on DVD.

The film is recommended for fans of Zhang Yimou or Gong Li, though without the vibrant cinematography the film wouldn't be ranked as his best by many people. If you've already got the film on VHS, it's not worth "upgrading" to the DVD though.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
A wonderful film of Chinese triads in the early Republic, with all the dynamic., 18 February 1999

Author: anonymous from West Springfield, Ma USA

Gong-Li and film making partner Zhang Yimou have another fine hit; in a series that is beautiful filmmaking as well as one the government would find disapproving of the reality of triads.

She plays a "moll" , also a singing star triggering more than an ample reward for the conniving under bosses who would try to topple the boss.

Stunningly photographed and acted, maybe near the Hang Zhou coast (or a rare unfilled canal in Shanghai?) ... with his beautiful concubine, and the narrative device of a young male orphan as fellow observer; the Boss hits the mattresses due to an attempted murder from within; and retires to an island to discern the traitor giving orders to kill anyone who arrives or leaves the island without his permission.

Then the Boss waits, and Gong-Li idles no longer singing in the cabaret; and the "smoke out" begins.

Excellent poignant drama sensitively photographed.

As in all her films, and the directors, the people as bystanders and victims of any corruption is a subtle attended theme!

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8 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Let's get out of the weeds and back in the nightclub., 9 February 2001

Author: Ted-101 from New York

There has been way to much chatter about how beautiful this film is with its sumptuous sets, costumes, and magnificent photography. On the surface this looks like another gangster film, this time taking place in Shanghai. But of course, it isn't. The gangster scenario is just the backdrop really.

Shuisheng, a boy of 14, has come to the city to serve the haughty and beautiful Xiao Jingbao, the nightclub singing moll of Tang, head of the most powerful gang in Shanghai.

Shuisheng's uncle is a riot as he gives the boy a whacky set of instructions on how to be a proper servant to snobby Xiao, wonderfully played by Gong Li. "Call her 'Miss'. Follow her wherever she goes, not to far behind, and not to close. That's the rule. Hold her coat in your left hand and her hat in the right, but don't let the coat drag on the floor. That's the rule. Got it?" And the Shuisheng replies, "Got it." However, after "Miss" delights in calling him a country bumpkin, and chews him out a couple of times, (And why not, Shuisheng can't tell a red dress from a green one.) the kid starts looking for the exit. When his uncle tells him, "When she rings for you, stop everything (yes, everything) and go to her. Got it?" His reply this time is, "I want to leave." Bad move, uncle is most displeased.

In many ways, Shuisheng is the most inscrutable character in the movie. He's got a real poker face, and you'll probably have a tough time deciding if he's an idiot, or a sharp kid who's observing things closely and learning fast. This is the heart of the film, the relationship between the boy and the woman. Eventually, the boy will find out the self-important, hip swinging Xiao Jingbao is miserable. She is the beautiful songbird hopelessly trapped in a world where she is bathed in luxury by the ruthless Tang, with no hope of freedom.

The boy's whole attitude changes when he realizes this, and the question the film poses from here is ... what, if anything, can he do about it? If this was an American film, (and I'd love to see such a version) probably plenty, but director Yimou Zhang is a cynical man with a dark outlook on life. All his films have downbeat endings, and this one is no exception. What really bothers me though, is that events take place that result in a complete shift in setting half way through the film, and that's always a dangerous move in the cinema. And this abrupt shift comes at a time when things are just getting interesting in the nightclub, when Shuisheng realizes "Miss" is very unhappy. He might have been able to help her in the big city and spacious confines of the nightclub, but marooned on an island, there's not much he can do. This is a good film, but I would have liked to see the plot move in a different direction in the second half.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Wonderful, 5 September 2000
Author: Ezreal

This film is, foremost, a gangster film, but Zhang Yimou tells it from a much more interesting angle. As far as the plot about moles and trying to find the traitor in the group, it's old hat. What isn't, however, is seeing how the children, practically enslaved by a triad boss, begin to slowly turn into the type of people that Tang and Bijou are throughout the movie.

Another refreshing change was, despite Tang's wealth, the triads are not romanticized like the mafia often is in this country. Tang, unlike Vito Corleone, is a ruthless killer, born and bred, not a family man forced into a situation.

What impresses me most about Zhang Yimou's films are the cyclic nature, where everything comes full circle in the end. For many, the colors and political messages are the topic of discussion, but watching events carry out within a restricted time, and follow the Eastern idea of cyclical rather than linear time, is more interesting, since these characters continue to develop in one's head even after the movie has ended.

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
A film of both aesthetic beauty and immense heart, 6 October 2000

Author: jeff_stryker from Hampshire, England

When I first saw Zhang Yimou's wonderful 'Raise the Red Lantern', I missed all but the last 30 minutes. This is the most regretful episode of my life for the film has now been deleted. My life was honestly changed as that half an hour was a real time anomoly, obeying the theory of relativity and breaking that particular convention by immersing me so fully that it seemed to last forever and yet, not long enough. 'Shanghai Triad' does not contain that one off quality, however, it is in itself a fascinating film. The colour scheme, of many Yimou films remains, his use of colour is deeply moving as it becomes sublime and almost 'old school'. You can see movies of the studio system being played out again but in a whole new style. Red is so prominent once again and for reasons we can only speculate. Personally I see the colour red as an exciting colour, it conveys to me a sense of a past in which I did not belong to, how I did not exist. The fascination I have in history pre-1982 and more importantly the early 20th century glamour and ancient history.

The splendour of the whole thing is beyond belief, it could almost have the production values of a Hollywood mainstream movie. It shows that perhaps you can create a better effect with lower production values. The Tang household is splendid, but it's vastness perfectly encapsulates a lonely feeling that puts you in the place of the child as well as any cliched point of view shots ever could. It is moments like these that prove Yimou's background as a cinematographer, he is a master of the visual, able to simply show a character's mood in an implicit sweep of camera and minutely fine detail within the mise-en-scene excluding cliche from his work completely. This is the sort of filmmaking we would associate with Ridley Scott, Scott is a visualist, he works with far darker tones than Yimou, which from a personal point of view, makes Yimou my prefered choice, but Scott himself blended both dark and light in 'Thelma and Louise' like Yimou has done for most of his career. The characters themselves have layers of light and dark which are conveyed well in all of their surroundings.

This comparison with Scott brings me to the point in Triad when the empathy shifts from the boy to be shared by him and Bijou. This does echo a bit of the Roy Batty syndrome which was probably the reason for 'Blade Runner's' limited success on it's original release, or so says Robert McKee. But Gong Li's performance is outstanding. She nails Bijou's nasty streak to a tee and then compels us to believe that she is more than that. Of course it is helped when the viewer feels that the situation she is in is a frightening one, not unlike mountaineering where one false step could end up in death, at what ever height you are at. Li is one of the finest actresses in the world, not to mention that her beauty is unparalleled. (Despite the fact that she is just four years younger than my mother) The film may not be seen as very moral but it is clear that it has heart as we feel so bad about the events that end the film. Li shows her hardness of character and complete vulnerability then finally her loss of control, shame and regret. This heart is not made of solid stone, rather a quite flexible rubber.

It requires a period of reflection, one that does not equal that of 'Raise the Red Lantern' but is the only film to have such a numbing effect since. By now though, I have Lantern in such a high regard that it borders on gaining a mythical quality as I have yet to see it in it's entirety. It's not every day that a heavily opinionated young man will be reduced to a pathetic single syllable, but when Triad is finished, many of you will be reduced to it too, lay back and just clear your head of anything other than the film, all that enters the head will be "Wow".

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Interesting, beautiful, moving - Zhang Yimou rocks again, 29 March 2000

Author: Eunice Sioson (Belatrix) from San Diego, CA

Zhang Yimou's attempt to squeeze yet another Chinese history lesson into one of his movies aside, I still came away unexpectedly moved by "Shanghai Triad." The story is fascinating, sometimes in a morbid way, sometimes in a childish one. I got the sense that I'm being witness to a myth in the making, one of those amazing stories out of history that have underlying messages about the human condition. Zhang's treatment of the aesthetic, both visual and aural (Ajiao's song makes for a wonderful musical theme), is moving as ever. And since it's by him, all the symbols, allusions, circular events, juxtaposition of characters - and all the rest of that - applies.

Gong Li as the bratty and doomed Bijou is wonderful to watch, and Wang Xiaoxiao is very effective as the audience's stand-in in the movie.

And the history lesson wasn't so bad either.

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Intelligent study is overlong and indulgent, 3 June 2008
Author: gcd70 from Melbourne, Australia

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Zhang Yimou's film about power play, loyalties and betrayal was adapted by Bi Feiyn from the aptly named novel "Gang Law", written by Li Xiao. The film focuses on a young boy whose family name wins him the honour of working for the most powerful crime boss in Shanghai, Tang. Little Shuisheng finds himself landed with the thankless task of being personal servant to the bosses number one girl, "Bijou" (or "Miss" to anyone else). He soon learns how unjust the world is when his uncle is murdered by a rival gang and his mistress treats him like dirt.

Yimou cleverly manipulates the audience, making us fond of characters whom we turn away from later, and endearing us to others whom we despised early on. The central character, "Bijou", is convincingly played by Gong Li. Throughout most of the movie she is quite easy to dislike, and it is only near the end of the film that we are allowed to develop some belated compassion for her. Shuisheng remains a rather naive pawn until ti's all too late, while the real villains who are responsible for creating the monsters they then self-righteously destroy, rear their ugly heads at the very last. Young Wang Xiaoxiao plays well the role of the green Tang, Shuisheng, while other support comes from Li Baotian as Tang the crime boss and Sun Chun as Song.

Zhang Guangtion provides a charming, melodic score and Art Directors Huang Xingming and Ma Yongming recreate pre-war Shanghai brilliantly. Unfortunately editor Du Yuan lets us down and "Shanghai Triad" suffers from over-length, with Yimou tending to excessively indulge on occasion. Otherwise this is an interesting study of a very different culture.

Monday, March 3, 1997 - Hoyts Croydon

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