I got this movie very cheap together with a bunch of others. I want to explore new movies and maybe go into unknown territory. I take a chance. Often the movies are bland or just bad. Now and again I find a movie like this which makes up for all the others.This movie tells a rather long story in a short time. Seeing all that happens, this movie could easily been an hour longer and still have been interesting. Where many other movies fail doing this. This works.There are very many scenes and quite little dialogue (not too little though) and somehow it works. The scenes often has memorable details and what comes next is done in a lot better way than most American movies which are too much cliché or just too random.The movie constantly has shades of innocence and darkness which makes it not fall into the pit of being too serious or too corny.I thought the movie was okay at first but seeing how it went on and rarely was predictable made me respect it more and more for each scene. A real treat to watch.When I soon saw the grade on IMDb has was very surprised. 5,5 / 10? That is a mediocre movie to me.. One of the others I have taken a chance for that left little impression. This has left me with a lot of impressions. I highly recommend this movie and I don't even know Chinese. Just watching via subtitles works very fine.

Three friends from the sticks go to Shanghai and become gangsters in around the Paradise club. As time goes on and they climb up the ladder they find their relationships tested.Replace Shanghai with Chicago or New York and you'd have an Oscar nominated film for the art direction and costuming. This is a great looking 1930's gangster film moved to China and its a joy to behold. Its one of those movies you'd like to use as a moving piece of art on the wall.Unfortunately the script is really lacking. Dialog is sparse and not very colorful. Its almost bland retread dialog and it takes the edge off things. the characters are less then thrilling. The look the part but they don't have much beyond the look to carry them. Worse is the plot line which is a tad been there done that, but also really lacks any real action. yes there are some beatings and shootings but nothing really large scale until the final half hour, or rather the final shoot out. There is no real action to lift these characters up and put them into a a heroic or anti-heroic pantheon- there is nothing that makes them larger than life. It could be argued that the film that looks this good, opulent and often epic, but is ultimately a small scale story over inflated. had this been filmed less grandly it would have played differently-probably better-since we would not have been waiting for something epic to happen. This isn't to diminish the final shoot out which has a very high level of "Hong Kong Cool" its just that the 90 minutes that proceed it are undeserving of the pay off.Worth a look on cable or as a borrow, but not something I'd search out (or watch again) (Just a question-how many Chinese films over the last decade or so all are called Blood Brothers in English?)

Three childhood friends from the sticks climb the greasy pole of the '30s Shanghai underworld in "Blood Brothers," an enjoyable but lightly scripted crimer that plays like a sketch for a broader, more epic yarn. Shot through with references to John Woo (who produced) and Sergio Leone -- but rarely achieving the deep, tragic resonance of either -- it's still an impressive debut by Western-trained helmer Alexi Tan, a onetime stills-photographer who marshals his pan-Chinese star cast with visual aplomb. Pic tanked on Hong Kong release in August but did better in China; for Western markets, warm ancillary looms. Story is largely told as a flashback, as Feng (Daniel Wu) surveys a scene of carnage in snowy Shanghai -- a classic movie image referring to winter-set films of the time -- and asks in v.o.: "Why did we come to this place?" The simple answer is: fame and fortune. But as the pic flips back a while, to show the trio in their home village of Zhujiajiao, close to Shanghai, it's clear they're very different characters. Feng is the principled romantic, who falls for pretty Su Zhen (Lulu Li, aka Li Xiaolu from "Xiu Xiu"); Kang (Mainland hunk Liu Ye) is the ambitious muscle, who protects family and friends; and Kang's kid brother, Hu (Taiwan's Tony Yang, from "Formula 17"), is the nervous type in his bro's shadow. Early scenes showing them as young men in rural China have a genuine charm, even though the on screen chemistry between the three thesps is never as natural as it should be. Still, the pic never tarries, and soon, on Kang's suggestion, they're in Shanghai, pulling rickshaws or waiting tables. Hu, who works in the ritzy Paradise Night Club, gets them in one evening, just in time to see star chantoosie Lulu (Taiwan's Shu Qi) perform. Lulu is also the private property of the club's owner, Boss Hong (mainland thesp Sun Honglei, in a standout perf of casual villainy). Through a series of coincidences that involve Feng rescuing Hong's wounded chief henchman, Mark (Taiwan's Chang Chen), the trio start working for Hong. Kang soon relishes the power and violence, while Feng is more circumspect; the latter is also used as a doormat by Lulu, who's conducting a secret affair with Mark. At the hour point, the pic turns considerably darker when all these tangled emotions start to combust and Kang makes a bid for power. With the help of a classy tech team, including Hong Kong p.d. Alfred Lau ("2046") and costume designer Tim Yip ("A Better Tomorrow," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), helmer Tan brings off one after another action or atmosphere set-piece, with Michel Taburiaux's succulent widescreen lensing adding further texture. It's still backlot '30s Shanghai rather than real-looking '30s Shanghai, but it has more flavor and color than several recent big productions. What the movie lacks is really large set-pieces that give the characters a heroic stature and the whole story a long-limbed feel. It also lacks dialog that's more than just functional. As the ruthless big boss, Sun dominates in a way that only fellow mainlander Liu, as his equally ruthless protégé, comes close to approaching. Chang is OK as the two-timing henchman, but Wu and Yang barely convince in their roles. Among the women, Shu Qi has the star wattage to bring off her chanteuse role, but looks too modern; Li is fine as Feng's hometown love. In-jokes dot the movie, from Woo's own Lion Rock Prods. stenciled on a crate of guns, to the name of Tan's own Shanghainese grandmother, Tsiao Hong Ying, used for a singer. Period songs and nightclub routines are glitzy and un-camp, but a little too neat and modern-looking. Original title roughly means "Gate to Paradise," referring to the central nightclub.

With the 30's Shanghai as background, the film is a gangs story, a romance story, a brotherhood story and a simple story, with a theme portraying the lust for power against brotherhood piety. The narrative is unrestricted with plots generally linear albeit that it is told in flashback. The story embeds complex relations among characters with such relations & revenges constituting parallel narratives for similarity and contrast. The narrative is framed from the perspective of Feng (Daniel Wu) and supplemented with ancillary perspective from the other lead, Mark (Chen Chang). Director Alexi Tan attempts to make it moderately stylistic by use of freeze action (not freeze frame), complete silence and some other cinematographic devices (obviously Tan restrains it from being overdone). Though the movie comes with strong leads and their fine staging, the diegesis is relatively weak and shallow in portraying the evolution of the key antagonists' personalities down the plots. Nevertheless, visual motif (flicking of cigarette on a cigarette box) is repeatedly used to reinforce the use of power and the desire for such. In terms of visuals, the film comes with replete elegant costumes and settings with Mckintoshes, western hats, suits and cuffed shirts' sleeves filling the mise-en-scenes. Fine mastering of lighting and shooting angles in the presence of both diegetic and non-diegetic music delivers a moody combination of visual and acoustic amusement to the audience. The gun-pointing scenes are fairly flamboyant in mounting up tension whilst sudden fires and zigzags of characters' motions bring occasional shocks to the audience and generate uncomfortable surprises to the audience. Yet the visual-acoustic artifice is less than sufficient to redress its shortcoming in the meek, if not weak, psychological coverage of the characters. The film is another product in which substance is subordinate to style.