Chan Is Missing (1982)

Directed by

Wayne Wang

Genre

buddy film, comedy drama

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 16m

Rating

6.8 of 10 from 33 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Two Chinese American cabbies in San Francisco search for a mutual friend named Chan who has vanished. As they follow leads and talk to people, they find more questions than answers about who Chan really was.

mysteriouslow-budgetcontemplativenoir-tingedfragmentedunderstatedquirkymelancholic

What happens

Chan Is Missing is a 1982 American independent comedy-drama film directed, co-written, produced and edited by Wayne Wang. It is his solo directorial debut. The film, which is shot in black-and-white, is plotted as a mystery with noir undertones, and its title is a play on the Charlie Chan film series, which focuses on a fictional Chinese immigrant detective in Honolulu. It is widely recognized as the first Asian-American feature narrative film to gain both theatrical distribution and critical acclaim outside of the Asian American community. Chan Is Missing turns the Charlie Chan detective trope on its head by making "Chan" the missing person that the film's two protagonists, Jo (Wood Moy) and Steve (Marc Hayashi), search for. In the process of trying to locate Chan, a fractured, even contradictory portrait of him emerges, mirroring the complexities of the polyglot Chinese American community that Chan's character allegorizes. In 1995, Chan Is Missing was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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