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Shanghai Surprise (1986)
R2 - United Kingdom - Anchor Bay Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Jari Kovalainen (30th April 2006). |
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The Film
 Back in 1985 one of the biggest bits of celebrity news was the marriage of highly popular singer Madonna, and already legendary Hollywood bad boy actor Sean Penn. Both were on their way to the top; Madonna became almost like the pop icon for her generation, and Penn is regarded one of the best actors that America has produced. During the time they were married, Madonna started to appear in some lighter movies as an actress, and it wouldn´t be long before co-writer/co-producer John Kohn, through his connections with Penn, offered the film “Shanghai Surprise (1986)” to Penn and his wife - seeing the possible attraction to get them both in the same movie. In his biography “Sean Penn - His Life and Times” by Richard T. Kelly (Faber and Faber, 2004), Penn gives a straight answer why he committed to the film: “For love and money”. Madonna asked Penn to take the role, and the offered money was good, so the production was quickly under way, taking the newly weds first in Shanghai, then to Hong Kong and Macao, and finally to London. One of the low points of Penn´s career was about to become a reality, with director Jim Goddard at the helm. The story is based on the novel “Faraday's Flowers” by Tony Kenrick, and happens in Shanghai, China in 1938, during the Japanese occupation (opening scene happens a year before). Two missionaries, including Gloria Tatlock (Madonna), have arrived in town to seek the “Faraday's Flowers”, meaning the 5 crates of opium that supposedly are hidden somewhere, from when the local “opium king” Walter Faraday Paul Freeman got into trouble during the Japanese invasion. Opium is badly needed for the suffering patients. Since they don´t know the language, nor the town, they´ll need a guide. This guide will be found from the pier, where Glendon Wasey (Sean Penn) is having his usual day of a hangover and a bad mood; unshaven and with very little money. They ask Wasey to locate the man called Wu Ch'En She, and after the nice offer of money, Gloria and Wasey start their search. At this point Wasey doesn´t know the full story about the opium, but the true nature of their search will come into the true light when all kind of troubles and incidents shadow the search, right from the outstart. They meet various people along the way, who are all more or less willing to “guide them” onto the right track, with differing results: the old partner of Faraday, Willie Tuttle (Richard Griffiths), Justin Kronk (Philip Sayer), local gangster Joe Go (Clyde Kusatsu), and mysterious girl China Doll (Sonserai Lee) are all part of the puzzle, and sadistic Mei Gan (Kay Tong Lim) is monitoring their search every bit of the way. What you should have is lively action and adventure, with added romance, and it should sweep the box office? Well, not quite. In his biography, Penn reveals some of the reasons that made the film what it is. He calls the executive producer Denis O'Brien “diabolical”, and Penn and him were the “poison” of the picture. Blame can be put on Penn himself, since “Shanghai Surprise” is the only film that he basically did drunk. He also explains how he had a new idea in the post-production to do like director Woody Allen did in his debut film “What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966)”; removing the original voice track, and dubbing it again with gags and comedy, but that never became reality. In any case, the film got obvious bad reviews and sunk at the box office. Madonna also won the 1987 “Razzie Award” of “Worst Actress” - not that these awards have any real meaning to anyone. Watching the film now, exactly 20 years later, reveals that the film is not the “worst film” ever made, and it has actually quite decent production values. Cinematography is too polished and a bit uninteresting, but the art direction and oriental locations create the needed eye-candy. The film still has strong weaknesses in pretty much every basic level, starting from the script and ending to the actors and direction. The historical and adventures backdrop that the story offers should give the tools to create some nice scenes of “boyish” action and excitement, but now the story is bouncing everywhere without any real clue, and introduces new characters every 15 minutes. The script is not coherent, and the lazy direction doesn´t help to patch the story up. Most importantly, all the “action”-scenes, as well as the “romantic” and “comedy”-ones leave you cold, when sometimes along the way comes to mind that there could´ve been potential for more. I found myself occasionally being mildly amused and sometimes even be mildly drawn to the story, but disappointed is the word that finally comes to mind when the end credits starts to roll. Sean Penn is an actor that I hugely admire, but in “Shanghai Surprise” he´s just another bystander. There´s no spirit in his acting, and he´s clearly there as a favour to his wife at that time, taking the paycheck, and probably have a drink or two in the exotic location. Then again his character doesn´t have that much room to work with, since Glendon Wasey is no Indiana Jones. When it comes to Madonna, it´s quite clear that she was very amateurish as an actress, when she did these “light comedies” in the 1980s. Again, she could be worse though, and I take one of her ´80s comedies in any day over the films like “Body of Evidence (1993)”. Romantic moments between Madonna and Penn don´t really make the film any better, but all in all they are hardly the biggest problem of the film. A couple of familiar British actors like Paul Freeman (“Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)” and “The Long Good Friday (1980)”) and Richard Griffiths (“Harry Potter”-films and “The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)”) are also included - and don´t do much for the film, but actor Kay Tong Lim as a role of “Mei Gan” gives a nice menacing touch to his character. As to underline that the film is from the 1980s, ex-Beatle George Harrison has made a series of songs for the film, also serving as one of the executive producers. The music is not actually that bad, but if you hate the music from that era, then you probably won´t buy the soundtrack (some of the songs can be found from the re-mastered version of Harrison´s “Cloud Nine” - apparently there´s no official soundtrack). “Shanghai Surprise” is a flawed attempt to make an adventure-romance film, and unite the popular pop culture couple for the first time (Madonna and Penn actually also made one stage-play together in the same year with Harvey Keitel and Lorraine Bracco; “Goose And Tomtom”). It tries to combine different elements from comedy to action, not really succeeding in any of them. Its bad reputation has still probably gone a bit ahead of the actual truth, and I´m sure you´ll find many other films out there that are worse than this one. At least this one tries to achieve something, too bad that it tries to always in the wrong way.
Video
The transfer is presented in Anamorphic 1.85:1, and is actually quite good. Apart from a few film artifacts, the transfer is really clean, boasting strong colours and stable black levels. Perhaps some softness can be detected in some scenes and slight film grain, but generally the transfer comes from the relatively pristine source. Since the old R1-release is 4:3, UK-release is clearly the obvious choice. The film runs 92:47 min (PAL), includes 12 chapters, and is coded “R2”. “Dual layer”-disc keeps the bitrate around 8-9 mb/s, so no complaints in that department.
Audio
Like many times before, Anchor Bay includes various sound options, and you can choose from English DTS 5.1, English Dolby Digital 5.1, and English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo (with surround encoding). Their style to add 5.1-remixes often cause some talk of them being “useless” or “no good”, but at least in “Shanghai Surprise” the DTS-option is recommended. It probably lacks some of the dynamics and depth that some other DTS-options have, but it does the job rather well. It spreads the dialogue slightly between the front channels (meaning that it doesn´t come only from the front center), but leaves the rear channels only for the music and certain directional sounds, with some general “ambient”. There are no big differences with these audio options, so DTS is not clearly better of the two 5.1-choices. Too bad that there are a few lip synch -issues along the way, probably a minor fault in the mastering process (not that distracting, though). Optional English HoH subtitles are also included, which shows that Anchor Bay UK has listened to the fans, and deserves the kudos for that.
Extras
As much as I would like to hear comments from the cast & crew about the production, clearly that isn´t happening any time soon; probably never. Original theatrical trailer (1.24 min) is included, as well as biographies for Madonna and Sean Penn.
Overall
Was “Shanghai Surprise” a wasted opportunity, or a doomed idea in the first place? Probably both in some degree, since with a different group of filmmakers and with a better script, there would´ve been a much better chance to make this film work. Casting Madonna and Penn in this project probably doomed it from the start, since by that time Madonna was a performer more than an actress, and Penn was still finding ways to cope with the problems of his personal life - he wasn´t ready for this type of “Mainstream film” that didn´t give him any real challenge or passion. By looking at his CV now, I´m not sure that Penn will ever do a really commercial Hollywood-film in his career. For more info, please visit the homepage of Anchor Bay Entertainment UK.
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