Two things made my particularly sad about this film -- unrelated to acting.
1. Twin Towers appeared tall and mighty in two scenes, one through the window of the news reporter's fancy apartment, the other on the street before undercover cop was shot.
2. Except hair styles, Chinatown of 2008 doesn't change much from 1985. I guess this part of America is frozen in time.
The old elite business people in Chinatown want to keep it that way and the Southern part of the USA is frozen in time with regards to things like lack of unionization, and lack of investments in areas such as education, health care, environment and labor protections, etc.
shareYou know, an unchanging China Town may not be a bad thing. Change isn't all that it's cracked up to be. I live in a city that has grown from 100,000 people in the early 1950s to over 4.3-million in 2012. None of the houses I lived in as a child exist anymore. My old stomping grounds are over-run with commercial and corporate buildings. I can't get a cup of hot chocolate or a glazed doughnut at Ruby and Don's cafe, or a good ole LaCucaracha taco anymore. The little drive in where we chased girls and ate french fries and drank 10 cent Coca-colas has been a design studio for 40 years.
In my city where I grew up, you can't go home again. You apparently can in Chinatown.
It's nice that you are concerned about your hometown.
I agreed that change is not necessarily good. I used to live a a city of 50,000 to 60,000 people that still had a rural setting where you had empty lots where you can ride your bicycles, plus you could take a ride out in the countryside in about 5 to 10 minutes from any part of the city Now the city is over 400,000 people, all the empty lots are gone, and it is impossible to take a nice quiet ride in the countryside because all the little towns that surround my city have grown to about 50,000 or more people. It is like living in Los Angeles or the East Bay Area.
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Perhaps the reason Chinatown hasn't changed is because most of the inhabitants like it the way it is? If they didn't, they'd do something about it.
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'Days of London' - An Olympic Games-themed tribute to Tony Scott: http://tinyurl.com/bbbkfxf
Chinatown is changing, however. The gentrification/decline has already started, the center of Chinese New York City has been fleeing to Flushing and Bay Ridge, and its only a matter of time before Chinatown starts noticeably shrinking the way Little Italy once did.
shareI know how much it saddened me to realize that the Twin Towers were gone. So I can only imagine what it must feel like for a New Yorker.. :(
I'm still mad at myself that I only checked out the WTC from the outside when I was there back in '86. Went up on the Empire State Building but skipped the Towers ..
So how does Chinatown look these days? My memory of it is pretty much identical to what they show in the film. Even though most of the stuff was shot on a soundstage/backlot.. :)
S.