The plot of this film leads to one of the darkest days in American history, the largest lynching ever occurred in the stars spangled banner country, an event that happened in Los Angeles Chinatown back in 1871, when an angry mass stormed through LA chinatown, lynching every chinese citizen that stood on their way killing an estimated 18 to 20 chinese immigrant having no consequences for it. (The best TV series that you are not watching, “Warrior” did an excellent ficticional recreation of this happening on their second season) However, this movie only uses that incident as excuse to tell a corny love story that revolves around a girl (Carmen Lee) who arrives to San Francisco running away from an arranged marriage in Guandong, her hometown and a cook (Godfrey Hao), who´s expecting to get rich in the gold rush. Their love story leads to the Chinatown massacre.
The film has very good intentions and its excellent cast do their best to defend their characters, but actually, is just a simple soap opera romantic feature, with low production values and a stinky television format filled with annoying constant fades to black on its montage, that brings to an exasperating lack of rythm. A production oriented to the chinese-American community, that teases with some internal jokes, that are really effective, and displays some average moments of kung fu but makes the worst mistake a movie could ever make, is so boring…
Good intentions and a good will to deliver something good that unfortunately came up short.