Earlier this month we reported that the Weinstein Company were finally going to release Mikael Håfström’s long delayed WWII set drama “Shanghai” this June — in China.
There has been no word yet on why the film, which wrapped way back in August 2008, and was officially booted from The Weinstein Company’s release schedule last fall, has been continually delayed but clearly it’s a film the studio has high hopes for and watching the international trailer, which has just landed online, it’s easy to see why. The film is about “an American intelligence official who investigates a friend’s death in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.” The first half of the trailer actually isn’t too bad, displaying some pretty sharp noir overtones. But when the second half of the trailer begins with a generic shootout in a club, things go downhill from there. It looks sumptuously put together, well acted but also very, very bland. Having watched this, we’re not surprised the film, at one point tipped as an Oscar contender for the studio, has been kept on the backburner. The film also apparently faced a longer than usual post-production cycle with editing troubles and a revolving door of score composers slowing things down.
The film, which stars John Cusack, Chow Yun-fat, Gong Li, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Franka Potente, David Morse and Ken Watanabe is still listed as “Coming Soon” on The Weinstein Company website, but there is still no official release date for the U.S.