Tai-Pan (1986) DEG/Drama-Adventure RT: 127 minutes Rated R (violence, nudity, sexual content) Director: Daryl Duke Screenplay: John Briley and Stanley Mann Music: Maurice Jarre Cinematography: Jack Cardiff Release date: November 7, 1986 (US) Cast: Bryan Brown, Joan Chen, John Stanton, Tim Guinee, Russell Wong, Bill Leadbetter, Katy Behean, Kyra Sedgwick, Janine Turner, Norman Rodway, John Bennett, Derrick Branche, Vic Armstrong. Box Office: $4M (US)
Rating: *
It didn’t take me long to figure out the main problem with Tai-Pan, a failed attempt at adapting James Clavell’s 1966 epic novel about the founding of Hong Kong. It’s too long and involved to be condensed into a two-hour movie. It should have been a mini-series like Shogun and Noble House also written by Clavell. In this form, it plays more like an outline of the novel only touching upon the major events of the story with little detail or explanation. Early on in Tai-Pan, Bryan Brown’s character says “Ach! That was terrible!” in regard to a weak throw in a caber toss game. He may just as well have been referring to the awful script by James Briley and Stanley Mann. How could anybody have thought that a two-hour movie would do a 727-page novel justice? In what world is that even possible?
Sadly, this isn’t the film’s only problem. There are many, but since I believe in giving credit where due, I’ll begin by saying something positive about Tai-Pan. Aesthetically speaking, it looks great. The costumes and sets are completely authentic to the 19th century. The cinematography by Jack Cardiff (Death on the Nile, Rambo: First Blood Part II) is quite good. It’s a very colorful movie. It’s too bad the rest of Tai-Pan is such a deathly bore.
Set just after the First Opium War (1839-42), the British get expelled from mainland China and their opium destroyed. They set up shop on the nearby uninhabited island of Hong Kong, a geographically unfriendly place that will ultimately become a major city. The two main characters, Dirk Struan (Brown, F/X) and Tyler Brock (Stanton, Rent-a-Cop), own competing trading companies. Dirk is regarded as the “Tai-Pan” (translation, “Supreme Leader”) and Brock would love nothing more than to put him out of business. Needless to say, their relationship is contentious on good days.
Although married, Dirk is involved with May-May (Chen, The Last Emperor), a native girl he purchased to be his sex slave. He also has two sons, Culum (Guinee, Blade) and Gordon (Wong, The Joy Luck Club). Culum comes to stay with him after the death of the rest of his family back in Glasgow. Gordon is his son from another woman (we never meet her) and helps him run his business. Brock has a son named Gorth (Leadbitter, Love and Death on Long Island), a repulsive sociopath who befriends Culum as a means of destroying his father’s main competitor. Culum becomes romantically involved with Tess (Sedgwick, The Closer), Brock’s daughter. After going at each other for an indeterminate amount of time (years, I think), Dirk and Brock finally fight each other during a violent tropical storm.
Quite a lot happens over the course of the film’s 127 minutes, but I’m going to stop my plot synopsis here. Much like a two-hour movie won’t do Tai-Pan justice, my 800+ word review can’t do the movie justice. There are several plot treads that go nowhere. Characters come and go without explanation. I didn’t know May-May wasn’t Gordon’s mother until midway through the film. Allow me to go back and revise my earlier statement about Tai-Pan being a deadly bore. Truth is it’s not. It’s so confusing and inept that you can’t help but stay interested. You can call it suspense if you want, but it keeps you guessing as to how much worse it can get.
The acting in Tai-Pan is especially terrible. The worst performance comes from Chen whose character exemplifies every negative stereotype associated with Chinese women. She calls Dirk “master”. She describes things as “terrifical bad” and “fantastical good”. That is when you can understand what she’s saying. Brown strikes way too many noble and heroic poses. Stanton frowns, glowers and looks mean. Leadbitter looks and acts like somebody you’d likely meet in a prison psychiatric wing. The acting is all over the map in terms of style and quality while remaining firmly rooted in that area specially reserved for truly bad acting.
The true guilty party is Daryl Duke, the same director who gave us the underrated 1978 heist flick The Silent Partner. Tai-Pan itself is something of a heist as he completely pissed away $25 million on this fiasco. The only thing I know wasn’t his fault was the interference of the Chinese government during shooting. The Communist censors forced him to make changes to things that they found offensive. Do they moonlight as network TV censors too? I won’t deny that Tai-Pan was an ambitious undertaking. Too bad it’s a near-total failure. In the words of May-May, it’s terrifical bad.
P.S. Get a load of the tagline on the poster. Where have I heard that before?
