Shanghai

The story of an American spy who arrives in Shanghai during the winter of 1941 to discover his friend has been killed. Driven to investigate the murder, he is drawn into an ever increasing web of mystery, conspiracy and deceit. Shanghai is set in China just before Pearl Harbor when most of the country has been taken over by the Japanese. John Cusack plays an American spy, Paul Soames, who arrives in the Shanghai to meet up with his colleague, only to find that he has been killed. He soon finds out that his colleague had been investigating Anthony Lanting, a local drug lord, played by Chow yun
Fat. The deeper Paul enters into the social fabric of the city, the more he realizes that nothing and nobody is what it seems. Antony’s beautiful wife, played by Gong Li, is loyal spouse and Chinese resistant fighter in one. Everybody in the city seems to be a double agent struggling to find their way in a cruel time, where their personal needs and desires often clash with the harsh divisions imposed by the impending war.