Mainland China stars Wang Baoqiang and Liu Haoran reunite for a fourth round of high-stakes snooping in Detective Chinatown 1900. The twist this time is that they are playing ancestral versions of the characters they have portrayed in three previous blockbuster installments. Switching the action from contemporary diaspora districts to turn-of-the-century San Francisco, the film throws the duo together to investigate a double murder that could trigger an all-out nationwide race war.
Chief among the big names joining our intrepid sleuths are Hong Kong legend Chow Yun-fat, as Chinatown’s unofficial kingpin, and John Cusack, who plays a scheming politician whose daughter is a murder victim.
Detective Chinatown 1900 is part of a clutch of tentpole Chinese offerings releasing around the world this week as part of the Lunar New Year festivities, which has become the mainland’s most fruitful frame at the box office in recent years. On day one (Jan 29) the film opened to $64 million in China alone. Through today, it has grossed $167 million there.
Previous entries in the now $1.3+ billion grossing Detective Chinatown franchise have followed mismatched duo Qin Feng (Liu), an introvert with incredible powers of deduction, and his cousin Tang Ren (Wang), a bumbling incompetent cop, as they solve murders in the immigrant Chinese neighborhoods of, respectively, Bangkok (2015), New York (2018), and Tokyo (2021).
Tang Ren’s histrionic, oftentimes scatological behavior is offset by Qin Feng’s almost superhuman intuition, and director Chen Sicheng has repeatedly doffed his cap to the BBC’s hugely successful series Sherlock, not least in the vivid visualisations of Holmes’ deductive reasoning.
Further fueling this association, Qin Feng is a self-proclaimed fan of Conan Doyle’s master sleuth, a detail taken one step further in this new period-set prequel. Liu’s character here, named Qin Fu, is first introduced on board a train heading for San Francisco, where he is providing impromptu interpretation for none other than Sherlock Holmes himself. Qin Fu is supposed to be meeting an emissary of China’s Empress Dowager on arrival, sent to catch a gang of political fugitives, but Holmes encourages his new protégé to assume his identity – apparently their names sound similar in Chinese – and investigate the Chinatown murders on his behalf.
Detective Chinatown 1900 is part of a clutch of tentpole Chinese offerings releasing around the world this week as part of the Lunar New Year festivities, which has become the mainland’s most fruitful frame at the box office in recent years. On day one (Jan 29) the film opened to $64 million in China alone. Through today, it has grossed $167 million there.
Previous entries in the now $1.3+ billion grossing Detective Chinatown franchise have followed mismatched duo Qin Feng (Liu), an introvert with incredible powers of deduction, and his cousin Tang Ren (Wang), a bumbling incompetent cop, as they solve murders in the immigrant Chinese neighborhoods of, respectively, Bangkok (2015), New York (2018), and Tokyo (2021).
Tang Ren’s histrionic, oftentimes scatological behavior is offset by Qin Feng’s almost superhuman intuition, and director Chen Sicheng has repeatedly doffed his cap to the BBC’s hugely successful series Sherlock, not least in the vivid visualisations of Holmes’ deductive reasoning.
Further fueling this association, Qin Feng is a self-proclaimed fan of Conan Doyle’s master sleuth, a detail taken one step further in this new period-set prequel. Liu’s character here, named Qin Fu, is first introduced on board a train heading for San Francisco, where he is providing impromptu interpretation for none other than Sherlock Holmes himself. Qin Fu is supposed to be meeting an emissary of China’s Empress Dowager on arrival, sent to catch a gang of political fugitives, but Holmes encourages his new protégé to assume his identity – apparently their names sound similar in Chinese – and investigate the Chinatown murders on his behalf.
For your information, Detective Chinatown 1900, a comedy-mystery film, earned USD 56 million on its opening day. Directed by Chen Sicheng and Dai Mo, the film blends humor with a tense mystery plot. With a star-studded cast and festival appeal, it is expected to attract many viewers, although it wasn’t expected to be among the top two positions. However, the lighthearted offering amidst action and thriller films seems to have caught the audience’s attention.
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