Shanghai Surprise (1986)
Genre: Adventure / Romance
Duration: 97 minuten
Country:
United Kingdom
Directed by: Jim Goddard
Stars: Madonna, Sean Penn and Paul Freeman
IMDb score:
3,3 (6.086)
Releasedate: 29 August 1986
Shanghai Surprise plot
"A romantic adventure for the dangerous at heart."
In 1937 part of China is occupied by the Japanese. A drug dealer wants to flee the country with a large shipment of opium. However, he is caught and killed. A year later, a female missionary hires an unsavory American to find the opium. This will reduce the pain of the wounded soldiers, she says. The American agrees, but there are more people who are after the drugs.
Actors and actresses
Glendon Wasey
Gloria Tatlock
Walter Faraday
Willie Tuttle
Joe Go
Justin Kronk
Mei Gan
Ho Chong
Yamagani San
Mr. Burns
Reviews & comments
stephan73
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- 6269 messages
- 14471 votes
Everything is bad about this movie. The plot, the humor and especially the acting. Now it is not strange to say that Madonna's acting is terrible, but Sean Penn also does his best to give a bad performance.
The fact that comical sound effects are used to "hear" that something is falling makes it all even crazier. Just a bad movie, better forgotten!
1*
Translated from Dutch · View original
Bobbejaantje
-
- 2306 messages
- 2094 votes
I started with an open mind, but I couldn't pull this off either. Too bad really for all the talent involved. A production of George Harrison and his Handmade Films company. I've been a Beatles fan all my life. The songs he uses here are not that bad, but... inappropriate for the 1930s atmosphere that the film should radiate. Moreover, with the pseudo-oriental arrangements there is also a camp edge that comes across in the wrong direction. Music is very important for a film and things actually go wrong there, even if there is a Beatle at the helm.
Furthermore, it is not clear what the film wants to be: drama, adventure film, comedy, rom-com... A combination is also possible, but it must all be in the right direction and that is not the case here. It doesn't really excel at anything. What I ultimately find positive are the settings. And Madonna looks good. It is understandable that she received a Razzie for worst actress because it was not good. But she certainly wasn't helped by the abysmal script. It looks like they were also inspired by classic noir. There you have more confusing scripts, but there you also have other qualities that are simply missing here. You can see the noir influence in the lighting in some scenes and there were also 2 figures present who seemed to take on the roles that Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet played in films such as Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. But just because you copy a number of elements doesn't mean it's a good film.
The film still has a certain appeal because of the link with pop culture and the involvement of 2 pop icons. But apart from that, it is a sleep-inducing activity.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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