Imports: Yadang: The Snitch and The Dumpling Queen

As usual, I'm running late on everything I want to write up for this blog and even Letterboxd over the past few weeks, so if you want to see Yadang in Boston, you're too late, though it looks like The Dumpling Queen is sticking around another week.

That said, I've got to respect AMC's trailer game on Yadang much more than usual. The AMC trailer block- 20 minutes long, including three ads for seeing a movie at AMC, a thing you're already doing - is justly kind of infamous, but I'd argue that there's some value in that, especially if folks are seeing a big movie, because advertising is kind of useless these days and this gives that audience an overview of what's coming out in the next few months that they'd like to see. Yadang, on the other hand, is the sort of genre movie that's probably only going to last one week, so what do they show for trailers? Three genre movies - Shadow Force, Watch the Skies, and Fight or Flight - that come out the next Friday, with "May 9th" clearly stated at the end. It's kind of the same thinking as the normal package, just targeted at those of us who will go to decent-looking little movies if we know they exist.

That said, I used just about every minute of the big block before The Dumpling Queen waiting for trains and snacks; even most of the Chinese-American audience that normally waits until the last second was in before me!


Yadang: The Snitch

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 2 May 2025 in AMC Causeway Street #8 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

If Yadang were a book, it would have three pages that were blank except for a roman numeral and maybe a subtitle and/or a year, or whatever the Korean equivalent of that would be. As a movie, the three distinct parts all run together, and the result is never quite the whiplash of shocking revelations or exciting twists. One can follow the story and enjoy the final caper, but maybe not be quite clear on how all that works.

The "snitch", in this case, is Lee Kang-su (Kang Ha-neul), although he's apparently more of a liaison between prosecutor Goo Gwan-hee (Yoo Hae-jin) and the sources he's developing than a mole in any particular criminal enterprise. It didn't start that way - Gwan-hee developed Kang-su as a source when the latter was used as a patsy and placed in a cell with a gangster that the former was prosecuting - but now the ambitious prosecutor's operations are bumping into cases the police are investigating, notably narcotics detective Oh Sang-jae (Park Hae-joon), who has gotten frightened actress Um Su-jin (Chae Won-bin) to lead him to Yoon Tae-su, a dealer in North Korean meth.

Maybe South Korean audiences with a bit more knowledge of their justice system (or at least the police-story tropes of it) will understand how Kang-su's whole deal works, because I can't see how this keeps him in nice suits and a Hummer-sized vehicle three years out of jail. Is there some loophole where prosecutors aren't allowed to speak to criminals directly but can fund consultants? Is it a pyramid scheme? Given that in one case the criminals are calling him to help broker a deal, he must be well-known in the underworld, and in that case, why haven't the gangs murdered him just on general principle? The basics of his character - guy who initially became amoral when let down by the system looking out for himself even though there's an honest man underneath - work but the details are iffy.

A lot of the movie is like that; many parts of the story that settle folks in their positions happen off-screen during time jumps so that a thing that was set up as really bad at first can be somewhat waved away fifteen minutes later. Bits of the election-centered story in the last act was set up earlier, but this high-stakes material seldom feels like an escalation or the culmination of what's come before. There's a lot going on, but emphasis seems to change out of convenience, rather than because the story is following a path.

It tends to work in the moment, at least, especially once it can play Kang Ha-neul's cocky snitch off Park Hae-joon's righteous cop more regularly, while Yoo Hae-jin does nice work scrubbing away the veneer of good intentions his prosecutor has over the course of the film. Director Hwang Byeng keeps things moving and shines particularly well when he gets to get into the con-artist capers of the finale. Sure, the audience can see how the last fifteen or twenty minutes are going to play out as soon as someone asks for a cigarette, but that's perhaps why the film might wind up re-watchable anyway - it's very enjoyable to sit, nodding, waiting for the penny that's already dropped to inevitably land on (mostly) bad people.


Shui Jiao Huang Hou (The Dumpling Queen)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 4 May 2025 in AMC Boston Common #13 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

It is, in some ways, oddly satisfying to see that the things folks are decrying as if they are somewhat unique issues with Hollywood and its descent into irrelevance are present throughout the world. The "product origin story", for example, which has manifested in North America as movies about Air Jordans, Tetris, the Blackberry, and so on, is apparently also a thing in the People's Republic of China, with Wanchai Ferry Dumplings getting one expected to be a big enough hit that it gets a more or less day-and-date release around the world.

Of course, it's more presented as the biography of founder Zang Jianhe (Ma Li), at least at the start, when she is effectively a single mother of two girls, 5 and 9, living in Qingdao, about to take a trip to Hong Kong to reunite with her husband (Kenny Wong Tak-bun) and join him in Thailand. When she arrives, though, he and his mother (Nina Paw Hee-ching) inform her that he has a second wife there who has already given him a son, but that's allowed in Thailand, and Jianhe will be recognized as his concubine. Having some pride, she stays in Hong Kong, eventually winding up in a boarding house run by widow Hong Jie (Kara Wai/Hui Yinghong), and works two or three jobs until an injury has her laid up and she meets neighbor Tang "Uncle Dessert" Shuibo (Ben Yuen Fu-wah), who suggests she join him at Wanchai Ferry with her well-regarded dumplings. There's no permitting, so they're often chased away by police, including Brother Hua (Zhu Yawen), a handsome widower who soon takes an interest in Jianhe as more than just a vendor, though he intends to emigrate to Canada for his own daughters' education.

A lot of these stories have roughly the same shape - determined immigrant, disrespected as a person and a woman, tremendous work ethic, helpful friends and neighbors, seeing opportunity in idle comments, holding firm when large companies try to dictate terms - so it's often the details that matter. The issue that the filmmakers seem to face, presuming that this is relatively close to the true story, is that a lot of the colorful pieces of Jianhe's story aren't necessarily all that germane to founding her business; Hong Jie's boarding house is full of colorful characters who serve to show just how exceptionally dedicated Jianhe is or what a good decision she made leaving the husband who didn't respect her, but steadiness isn't necessarily as interesting to watch as activity or initiative. The other end of the film has a fair amount of fast-forwarding while montages show what sort of changes Hong Kong was undergoing during this time, with Jianhe having to make a new decision that shifts her business's arc from street food to supermarket shelves. It tells the story, but at a bit of a remove.

There are a lot of steady hands involved, though - Mainland star Ma Li has a good handle on playing Jianhe as self-respecting even if she's initially nervous about putting her girls in a bad position early on and more firm-but-nice later. I am kind of curious about how Hong Kongers feel about her portrayal of JIanhe as an assimilating immigrant, since her difficulty with Cantonese is a large part of the first half or so of the movie. Kara Wai and Ben Yuen turn in pleasant supporting performances as the neighbors who are Jianhe's most important early supporters; the second half of the film would, perhaps, be more interesting if it got into how their characters fell away as Jianhe's business grew and how her daughters took a more active role as they became adults. Director Andrew Lau Wai-Keung is a journeyman who seldom calls for anything flashy and manages to evoke a nostalgic view of 1970s/1980s Hong Kong without things becoming cloying.

Which isn't to say the movie is particularly subtle or clever; the soundtrack gets mawkish about ten minutes in and more or less stays there, with the songs chosen a mix of Mandarin, Cantonese, and English like they're trying to find the balance that makes the film an international hit. The film does not actually stop to display a cartoon light bulb over Jianhe's head whenever someone mentions something along the lines of freezing dumplings, but almost seems to do so. And there's a sort of odd vibe to the whole thing at times: It's a Mainland production with a Mainland star telling a Hong Kong story with a Hong Kong director and supporting cast which builds to signing a deal with an American company, and given current tensions between the U.S. and China, censors expecting a pro-China message, and how Hong Kong nostalgia usually manifests, it feels oddly muted.

Not bad, as these corporate biographies and standard immigrant stories go, though not exceptional.