50
The spectacular international cast... bring a lot of life to the movie’s uncooperative story material.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
25
Slant Magazine by Clayton Dillard
Everything in Mikael Håfström's film is needlessly bloated to accommodate its status as an international, prestige production.
38
New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme
Hossein Amini’s script leaves good actors like John Cusack, Ken Watanabe and Chow Yun-Fat flailing.
30
Screen International by Graham Fuller
Despite its rich visual evocation of the eponymous port city as a simmering cauldron of vice, corruption, and barbarity, director Mikael Håfström’s film is undone by its tortuous plot, wooden characterisation, absence of narrative tension, and emotional nullity. It simply lacks conviction.
50
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
Pulp without style: Shanghai has many of the staples of noir—back alleys, shadowy figures, hard-boiled narration, and more femmes fatales than a viewer could keep track of—but none of the atmosphere or cool.
50
Washington Post by Mark Jenkins
Shanghai is an exercise in retro glamour, alluring decadence and tough-guy posing, all of which it delivers in sufficient quantities.
50
At least Gong is ravishing, which occasionally takes your mind off the gibberish that is going full tilt around her.
50
Chicago Sun-Times by Richard Roeper
The mystery is muddled, the romance is tepid and scenes that should be electric with tension are almost dull.
30
Los Angeles Times by Robert Abele
Under Mikael Håfström's visually clunky, rhythmless direction, it's a snooze of epic sameness: choppy action scenes, a blankly stern Cusack, and too many allegiance shifts to count or care for.
30
Cusack's low-simmering performance keeps the drama at a tediously low boil.