Brief Story Line
Story was set in San Francisco, USA during the year 1900 where the Chinese population had grown a lot and mostly lived in Chinatown, but still being discriminated by the Americans and other immigrants. The tension escalated when the daughter of US Congressman Grant (John Cusack - Utopia TV series, High Fidelity etc) and a native American were found murdered with Bai Zhenbang (Steven Zhang - My Huckleberry Friends, Skate into Love TV series etc) became the only suspect. Zhenbang's father Bai Xuanling (Chow Yun Fat - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Project Gutenberg etc) believed he was innocent and sought the help from outside party.
Through some mix up, Qin Fu (Liu Haoran - The Breaking Ice, Decoded etc) who just came to Chinatown had no choice but to assist in the investigation. With the help from Ah Gui (Wang Baoqiang - Iceman: The Time Traveller, A World Without Thieves etc) they both tried to find the truth despite their own difficulties. Things became more complicated when Chinese official Fei Yanggu (Yue Yun Peng - Buddies in India, If You Are the One 3 etc) was assigned by the Empress Dowager to capture revolutionaries in San Francisco, where his mission would intertwine with Qin Fu's investigation.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
I have watched all three Detective Chinatown movies years ago but never wrote anything about them. I think it was because I only got to see the films very late (if I am not mistaken, I saw the first one on the inflight entertainment more than a year after its release, while the rest were on cable TV many months later). Anyway I was quite fond of the movies as they managed to combine some intelligent deductions and slapstick humor that made me laughed. However, when I watched this latest installment which was not direct sequel, but rather a standalone story, I was not able to fully enjoy it.
First of all, the characters were completely different. Although Qin Fu was still shown as smart, but his intelligence pale in comparison to Qin Feng of the original story. Meanwhile Ah Gui was a bit similar in term of providing absurd moments, but there was very little of his good "quality" shown here. And then the mystery solving. Although there was some good deductive reasoning shown towards the end, unfortunately it was not too awesome. Having to explain in Mandarin & English did not exactly help either. To be honest, the first Detective Chinatown has always been my favorite in term of the case unfolding while this one was the least.
Despite its effort to show some comedic scenes, the movie also tried so hard to combine with historical part about the Chinese discrimination during that period which made it a bit heavy to my opinion. Nevertheless, I thought Chow Yun Fat was awesome here, particularly during the moment in front of the senate (it's been a while since I saw him showing his great acting capability). That was one of the few highlights in the movie for me. The main cast of Liu Hao Ran and Wang Bao Qiang were OK in general. There were also appearances of Bai Ke (Growing Pains of Swordsmen TV series, Surprise etc) as Zhenbang's good friend Zheng Shiliang, Yin Zheng (Pegasus, Winter Begonia TV series etc) as tribe leader Feng Ma, AJ Donnelly (Snipers, Burning Stars etc) as Thomas Lawrence and few others in support/minor capacity.
This movie was released during 2025 Chinese New Year along with several films. It went on to become the second highest grossing film in China behind only that gigantic Ne Zha 2. Looked like audience still loved this latest installment of the movie series and I am very sure this would not be the last, especially with such great box office performance (till date all of them has accumulated an amazing total of $1.8 billion). The film itself was still directed by Chen Si Cheng who also did all previous movies and wrote this one. He was joined by Dai Mo (Endless Journey, Sheep Without a Shepherd 2 etc) as co-director. The duration was pretty long at 135 minutes including closing credits that I thought capture the Chinatown's development very nicely, but there was no mid or post end credit scenes.
Overall this was still an OK comedy mystery movie, though for me it was definitely not the best out of the 4 films released. Although it still had the elements of slapstick comedy here and there but it lacked the usual really intelligent mystery solving & investigation as it focused quite a lot on other areas (like the discrimination & the revolution topic). I did enjoy the performance of Chow Yun Fat in here and the cinematography was quite awesome. Despite some scenes were likely using computer graphic, but the 1900 setting in San Francisco Chinatown was amazingly done. So if you just want to have a little bit of fun and you do not mind watching some of the attributes I mentioned, then you are welcome to give it a try. But if you want to see better Detective Chinatown, I would recommend watching the first one.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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