To focus on the archaic aspects of this film, like having a white man play a Japanese general (which, of course, is extremely unconvincing and just comes off as silly, on top of being a terrible practice of those decades), is to ignore what it did right and that was unheard of among other films of the time. This is Anna May Wong's film all the way, an Asian-American woman in a respectable lead role, and she does a great job in it. Her final scenes actually gave me chills. It takes a lot to make a viewer forget about the silliness of Japanese general being clearly played by an actor of European descent and put the viewer back into a suspension of disbelief. I'd say it's my favorite of her roles. And besides the general, I think pretty much every other Asian role is played by someone that's actually of Easy-Asian descent. And if one female action hero wasn't enough, this film actually has two women leading the turning of the tide on the fortunes of the Japanese invaders. One more issue I have, though, is of course the racist language towards the Japanese, but that's honestly just realistic and expected from anyone who faced the Japanese as enemies at the time. I was going to give this a 7, but Anna May Wong's final scenes made me push it to an 8.
Review of Lady from Chungking
