This is a relatively low budget B-movie and aside from one factor, it's pretty ordinary for the genre. The difference is the casting. First, the film has an unusually large number of very talented supporting characters such as Charles Bickford, Buster Crabbe, Anthony Quinn and J. Carrol Naish. Second, in a very unusual move for its sensitivity, the film stars two Asian actors--Anna May Wong and Philip Ahn. In just about every other case during this era, Asian leading characters were played by Westerners and this is the only film of the era I can think of that was made in the USA that had two Asians playing leading and sympathetic roles. Oddly, while Ahn is clearly the leading man, he is given low billing while Wong gets top billing. Perhaps this is because he was never a star and didn't command the same level of pay as Wong, although in Ahn's VERY long career, he appeared in 174 parts!
The film is about an evil group of human smugglers who kill Wong's father and try to kill her as well. Instead of waiting to inherit her father's fortune and live a quiet life, she goes undercover to infiltrate the gang. Later, Ahn also appears with the baddies, as he also infiltrated the gang. Now it's up to the pair to bring these folks to justice.
The fight scenes and script are all pretty standard. Apart from its sensitive portrayal of the Chinese (they were like real people--not patronized or evil), there isn't a whole lot to make this film anything other than a standard B programmer. However, for cinephiles like myself, it's an important film for being a bit of a milestone for Asians in Hollywood--too bad that this success didn't translate to more such films until the 1960s and later.
The film is about an evil group of human smugglers who kill Wong's father and try to kill her as well. Instead of waiting to inherit her father's fortune and live a quiet life, she goes undercover to infiltrate the gang. Later, Ahn also appears with the baddies, as he also infiltrated the gang. Now it's up to the pair to bring these folks to justice.
The fight scenes and script are all pretty standard. Apart from its sensitive portrayal of the Chinese (they were like real people--not patronized or evil), there isn't a whole lot to make this film anything other than a standard B programmer. However, for cinephiles like myself, it's an important film for being a bit of a milestone for Asians in Hollywood--too bad that this success didn't translate to more such films until the 1960s and later.