Detective Chinatown 1900- an honest review

January 2025 and a flood of new Chinese gems are released to celebrate the advent of the year of the snake. Most notably perhaps, we were gifted with the likes of Ne Zha 2- now the fifth highest grossing movie in the world to date- along with a standalone in the popular Detective Chinatown franchise, and the fourth installment: Detective Chinatown 1900.

After watching the first three films in this series, and with the fourth one out in China, Detective Chinatown 1900 was an immediate addition to my watchlist. I thoroughly enjoyed the first movie, although they seemed to be getting progressively worse, and so I was unsure whether this flick would live up to the hype. Nonetheless, with its expendable budget and recurring stars Wang Baoqiang and Turbo Liu, I felt relatively confident that this movie would prove itself deserving of at least a good amount of stars.

A solid 3/5. 

Despite the ambitious scale of the film, I do not feel that the story lived up to the standard of the other movies. With few twists and turns, and a relatively disappointing and largely unresolved ending, it felt to me like the entire narrative was intended solely for one purpose: to highlight the discrimination faced by the Chinese in 1900s America whilst preaching an overt call for Nationalism and total independence from the non-Sinitic world.

This film draws numerous parallels with the 2019 loosely-biographical action film by the name of Ip Man 4- the two films depict the lives of Chinese migrants living in 20th century America and the fierce and harsh discrimination which they receive, almost to the point of absurdity. They villainise Americans by presenting them as infinitely racist towards foreigners; Ip Man 4, however, suggests not only that all Americans are bad, but that they are bad to all other races, but most notably to Asians. Detective Chinatown, on the other hand, features a number of friendly westerners, whilst also presenting Asians as the sole victims, with all other peoples- from the Irish to African Americans- as antagonistic towards the Chinese. 

The two films also draw a lot of similarities in terms of visual aesthetics: dull, brown, earthy colours dominate the screen, which is a significant contrast to Sicheng's other works. Nonetheless, you could certainly see Chen Sicheng's signature brightness and vibrancy of visuals in the midst of all these monotonous browns and oranges; when the streets were brown, the sky was a beautiful blue. It is clear from the spectacular sets and exquisite details in all aspects of the Mise-En-Scene that the majority of the budget went into such background elements as these, whilst the cinematography was left bare and basic, the editing generally unimpressive, and the script-writing badly funded. 

Overall visually spectacular, but certainly did not match the narrative depth of its predecessors.