Shanghai

Shanghai (2010) is a historical noir thriller you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Mikael Håfström and starring John Cusack, Gong Li, Chow Yun-Fat, and Ken Watanabe. A China-US production set four months before Pearl Harbor.

American intelligence operative Paul Soams arrives in Japanese-occupied Shanghai under cover, nominally to investigate the death of a friend. The city in late 1941 is a controlled-demolition zone: every faction — Japanese military, Chinese gangsters, Western diplomats — is watching everyone else. Soams finds the killing threads back to a secret his own government prefers to keep buried. He also falls for the wife of the most dangerous man in the city, played by Gong Li.

Håfström treats pre-war Shanghai the way classic noir treats dark alleys — as a space where corruption has become the architecture. Cusack's low-key detachment works unusually well in this setting. Stream Shanghai (2010) in good quality on iFILM.