Shanghai

 Shanghai has a fascinating history. A focal point for the opium wars, control over it was strong-armed from the Chinese by foreign powers during the second half of the eighteenth century - the British, mostly, at the beginning, but other countries with imperialist designs (USA, France, Japan) soon joined in and basically set up wholly international suburbs around the city. While the city was nominally controlled by the Chinese, it was a sort of international plaything until it was invaded by the Japanese during the second world war.

 A political spy thriller set there just before the US joined WW2 is an incredible pitch, seeing as how both the Germans and the Japanese both had a presence in the city. But Shanghai, the movie, had a seriously troubled production; Permits to shoot on-location were revoked by the Chinese after pre-production had started. This forced the shoot to move to Thailand and the UK, further investors had to be brought in to cover ballooning costs, and let's not forget that this is a mainline Weinstein company production; The full extent of Harvey's sins was yet to be known, but they were still a legendarily meddlesome company. The finished film, when it was finally widely released seven years after completion, is a bit of a mess.

 Paul Soames (John Cusack) is a jaded, worldly spy in the Ian Fleming mould, sent to Shanghai to bring in a rogue spy acquaintance (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) at the behest of their handler (David Morse). When the spy turns up dead, Soames dives into the city's underworld to try to avenge his friend, and discovers that he was following up on some troubling information unearthed by an opium-addicted informant with ties to the head of local Japanese intelligence (Ken Watanabe).

 While all that's going on, he also tangles himself in the business of a local Triad boss (Chow Yun-fat) and his beautiful wife (Gong Li).

 

 The way things tie up is less than satisfactory, with the characters crossing paths in extremely contrived ways (Soames seems to luck into many of his major findings), desultory 'action' moments that drop Soames into a shootout solely to give the film some excitement, logic be damned, and a deeply suspect final act that feels completely at odds with the rest of the film's tone and even its genre. I've liked other scripts by writer Hossein Amini but this one, whether by design or compromise, is not one of his best.

 Pulpy noir and wartime movie references are thick; There's a lot of The Third Man and more than a little Casablanca in this movie's DNA. But director Mikael Håfström loads the movie with stylistic signifiers (An assassin shooting someone only shown by his shadow, Dutch angles, overwrought voiceover) that seem come off less as a homage than tacky.

 It's a lush, often handsome, clearly expensive production that nonetheless is made to feel weirdly low-rent by things like an over-reliance on TV-movie-style captions for the locations, bad editing, some desultory film-making, and an overuse of its claustrophobic exterior sets. This last one is forgivable, given the film's production troubles and how good the sets are; Production designer Jim Clay  pulled off an admirable job, as did cinematographer Benoit Delhomme, who manages to achieve some beautifully atmospheric shots (a shipspotting diversion is a highlight).

 The main problem, though, is the characters. The protagonist in particular is a gaping void at the story's heart, a cypher who uses Bondian nonchalance to mask a lack of characterization. Cusack is a good actor who's really good at putting on a blank expression, and that talent gets a huge workout in this movie. He manages to imbue Soames with a little of his fidgety, nervy energy and some intelligence, but as written the character just doesn't seem to have much of an inner life, however  much the glib voiceover narration may protest.
 And the extremely stacked international cast barely gets to make an impression despite involving some of the biggest stars outside of Hollywood. It's all surface-level; Watanabe gets to show off his wounded dignity, Chow Yun-fat his charisma and poise (even if his one action scene is deeply shitty), and Gong Li's femme fatale is mostly there to... well, look beautiful in glamorous dresses, her character oddly inert despite being deeply enmeshed (in oblique ways) in the plot.

 It's not terrible film, per se, just stilted, staid and disappointingly compromised. A huge waste of an incredible setting and premise, a great cast, and some incredible sets. Ces't le vie.