‘Snakehead’ Review: Nightmares on the Way to the American Dream - The New York Times

The writer and director Evan Jackson Leong sets a crime tale in New York City's Chinatown.

"Snakehead" is an unvarnished look at the seedy intersections between organized crime and human trafficking in present-day New York City's Chinatown. In his welcome but oversimplified addition to the American crime family saga, the writer-director Evan Jackson Leong carves out unapologetic space for a villainous family with a strong bond.

Telling the story through an intra-diasporic gaze, Leong positions the Chinese American kingpin Dai Mah (Jade Wu) and her sons against Sister Tse (Shuya Chang), a Chinese national who owes Dai Mah nearly $60,000 for smuggling her into the United States and is willing to become a human trafficker herself to clear the debt.

The movie wants to be both an insider look at the global apparatus of human trafficking, including its tragic costs, and a redemptive tale about the women at the center of this criminal underworld. Leong is more successful at the former than the latter.

Wu plays Dai Mah with a no-frills abandon that often makes her feel like the film's protagonist, but even her performance can't overcome the narrative missteps. The script flatly renders its female characters as either strong or weak, which fuels a stilted quest to prove themselves worthy of redemption in the eyes of the lackluster men around them. Leong confuses motherhood for a personality characteristic, and positions this fact as the reason Sister Tse is worthy of a hero's pedestal despite her complicity in Dai Mah's crimes. It is hollow and reductive. Add on the aimless voice-over, flashbacks overdone to the point of diluting their meaning and a couple of feeble fight scenes, and "Snakehead" tumbles all too quietly under the weight of its ambition.

Snakehead
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.