Detective Chinatown 1900 (2025)

Another fun story with actors we know

Wang Baoqiang and Liu Haoran are at it again, solving a murder while being goofy. Since they are not playing Tang Ren and Qin Feng, they are allowed to change up their roles a bit. Wang’s A Gui is much more serious, focused and skilled than Tang Ren. Lin’s Qin Fu is not the magic genius, and more an average person. This allows the story to be more balanced between them, with each bringing skills and insight, while also allowing both to be funny at times. The supporting actors are all fun characters and have parts to play. Chow Yun Fat is great. John Cusack plays the villain well.

The story itself is fine, trying to tell the murder story, while also trying to tell the story of the plight of Chinese immigrants. The costumes and production are very well done. A lot of time and money was spent to make it look really good, I felt the story was trying to do too much. They have multiple crimes, lots of tragic back stories, the anti-Qing movement, “the real villain is racism”, etc. The movie tries to say a lot, probably too much to be really effective as a murder mystery or social commentary.

The best part is the time change has allowed the main actors to play different characters in a similar story. It is a nice shack up which will hopefully keep the series from becoming stale.

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