Shanghai Surprise

Details

Produced by George Harrison and Denis O'Brien's film production company Handmade Films (Withnail & I; The Long Good Friday; Life Of Brian) and starring the then husband and wife team of Madonna (The Next Best Thing; Evita) and Academy Award winner Sean Penn (The Assassination Of Richard Nixon; 21 Grams; Mystic River), Shanghai Surprise, released on DVD by Anchor Bay (UK) on 10th April 2006, is a visually lavish, madcap romantic comedy set in China during the late 1930s.

Penn stars as Glendon Wasey, an itinerant tie salesman and wannabe fortune hunter looking for a fast track out of China. His shady character and grasp of the local language bring him into the service of a pair of missionaries, Miss Gloria Tatlock (Madonna) and Mr. Burns (Michael Aldridge), who have arrived in Shanghai in order to track down a missing shipment of opium which they intend to use to ease the pain of their suffering patients.

Legend tells that one year earlier the region's Opium King, Walter Faraday, was forced to hide a massive stash of the drug while on the run from the invading Japanese army. Of course, every low-life in the region is eager to get their hands on what has come to be known as Faraday's Flowers.

As fate sets Wasey and Gloria on a hectic, exotic, and even romantic quest for the missing stolen drugs, they find themselves having to deal with a seemingly never-ending procession of baseball-loving gangsters, Imperial concubines, sadistic police, and more double crosses than a good God-fearing woman could ever expect to come across in one lifetime.

Boasting several original songs composed by George Harrison, as well as featuring an amusing blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo by the former Beatle, the film also stars the respected British character actors Paul Freeman (Raiders Of The Lost Ark; The Long Good Friday) and Richard Griffiths (Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban; Stage Beauty).