Nice effects though.

Amateur movie with Big budget

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Blistering performances.

If you expect a movie to tell a story, to develop characters, to have actions, and their motivations, look elsewhere. If you're content to listen to bits of conversation between people you haven't been introduced to, who don't like each other much, who can't figure out what their lives are about, try this movie.Near the end of the film, the guy who's been looking for the missing person all film says, not only he doesn't know what happened to him, he doesn't know who he is.At one point the searcher and his partner receive a few thousand dollars that, we presume, somehow came from the missing person. We don't know why the money arrives, nor why the guy doesn't show up.If you want a missing person who just stays missing, whom no one seems to know much, look here for it.Or, if this is all you want, why see a movie? There's plenty similar "just life" going on everywhere, just as pointless.

These comments come as a counterpoint to the user review left some years ago, an opinion with which I completely disagree.I think this was a wonderful examination of the Chinese American character, at least in the eyes of a Mexican American (me). While the film addresses assimilation, as the previous reviewer expressed, that just scratches the surface of what it's telling you.This film highlights the depth of cultural differences, the conflicts faced by immigrants or those of immigrant background. But these are not just grandiose, operatic conflicts; they are daily, constant, and felt in both the major and minor issues of life. They are confronted in matters of life and death or musical preferences.This grand theme is presented in a lighthearted, often very funny, but subtly so, way. I found the storyline to be very interesting and exciting, not at all boring. It was a mystery, clues and leads leading to other leads or dead ends, interesting characters along the way. Yes, the search for Chan is secondary to the subtext, but it makes it no less entertaining.Car crashes? No. Shootouts? No. Sex and violence? No. But the film gives the viewer an alternate view of what is real, and an alternate context for the evaluation. Is it real, or is it not unreal? To me, this is both extremely funny and a brain burner.All this aside from the fact that this was a film made with seemingly real Chinese Americans, not big screen actors playing routine stereotypes. Look at Joe, and then listen to him speak, and see if it doesn't contradict some stereotypes burned into your head by Hollywood.This is a very good film.

Chan Is Missing begins with the old American classic "Rock Around The Clock", but here it's sung in Chinese. Be prepared to enter Chinatown as you have never experienced it in this 1981 no-budget film from director Wayne Wang.Filmed in Black and White with a cast of unknowns, Chan Is Missing uses the genre template of a mystery film to take us to the edge of a much bigger and more difficult human mystery Your friendly guide will be Jo (Wood Moy), a shambling, world-weary, Chinese-American taxi driver who has decided to go into the taxi business with his younger nephew Steve (Marc Hayashi). Calling themselves the Wing On Cab Company, they figure by splitting shifts, with Jo taking days and Steve taking nights, they both stand to make some decent money.However, in San Francisco, a special taxi licence is needed and they are hard to get. Chan Hung, a friend of Jo's from Taiwan knows where he can make a deal to sub-lease a taxi licence, but the deal is cash only.So, Jo and Steve pool their resources and come up with the $4000 dollars needed and they give the cash to Chan who goes off to finalize the deal.And that's that.After two days go by without any word from Chan, Jo and Steve begin to get worried, apparently, Chan is missing.They have no reason to suspect that Chan has stiffed them, but they do fear something may have happened to him. After all, Chan was relatively new to San Francisco. Their concern grows when they learn that Chan was involved in a fender-bender a short time ago and is also a no-show at his court appointment. A quick stop at the cheap hotel Chan lived at yields no information except that Chan hasn't been there for several days and a strange woman has also been looking for him (there is always a strange woman in a mystery).Jo thinks his friend Henry, a Chinese cook and restaurant owner might be able to help. Henry was a friend of Chan's back in China; in fact they studied aeronautical engineering together. But we gather that while Henry has been successful in America, Chan has faced disappointment.As Henry explains it, Americans won't hire the Chinese as engineers, they only want them "to make spring rolls." Henry is contemptuous of the food he has to cook for Americans and can't understand the popularity of Sweet And Sour Pork Ribs when the sauce alone makes him nauseous.And don't get him started on the tourists who order Won Ton Soup. He screams at his waiters to tell the Americans, "we don't have Won Ton Soup, tell them we have Won Ton spelled backwards, Not Now!" Eventually, Jo and Steve learn that Chan may be linked to an infamous "flag-waving incident" in San Francisco's Chinatown. At a recent Chinese Pride Day Parade, two different groups, one that supports the Peoples Republic Of China and another that supports a Free Taiwan, clashed on the street and Chan photographed the incident. Is his disappearance related to obscure Chinese Community politics? This clash also led to a notorious murder; is Chan involved with that? A promising lead takes Jo to a Chinese Community Center where he talks with George who taught English to Chan. George explains how some immigrant Chinese don't want to assimilate in the USA and this causes problems because a lot of their Chinese customs don't work over here.But the real problem comes from those who DO want to assimilate into white America as quickly as possible; the biggest problem being, obviously, they are not white. George tries to teach these people to retain the best things from Chinese culture and adapt them to the best things in American culture.Eventually, Jo tracks down the strange woman and it turns out to be Chan's wife, this is a surprise, as Jo did not know that Chan had a family. Yet, shortly after this meeting, Chan's daughter calls up Jo and Steve and returns their $4000 with apologies from Chan for not coming through with the taxi licence.Although Steve is happy to get the money back, Jo is even more confused. So are we. By this point, we have become very curious about who Chan is. But, no more so than Jo. After all, Chan was supposedly his friend and now after trying to find him, Jo has to conclude that he never really knew Chan at all.Also, Jo has not turned out to be a particularly good detective. At one point someone says to him, "Your nobodies concept of a Charlie Chan." Jo realizes this and muses to himself at one point, "If this were a TV movie, an important clue would pop up now and clarify everything." But that never happens.Over the course of the film, Chan is described variously as being: honest, paranoid, a genius, an idiot, sly, slow-witted, a failure, patriotic, "too Chinese" and it was noted by several people that he was especially fond of mariachi music. What we are left with at the end is Chan, the enigma.At the end of the film, Jo looks at a photograph of himself and Chan that was taken long before this Chan going missing business. Both men are standing outside a restaurant in Chinatown and Jo is poised in the sun and he is smiling, but Chan is standing in the shadows of a doorway, his features barely visible making Chan more of an enigma now than he was ever before.I was thoroughly enchanted by Chan Is Missing and I think you will be too.

This movie is among the first in Asian-American cinema, and also a very excellent independent film. Very well-directed and visualized, it concerns the misdventures of two gumshoes Joe and Steve, Chinatown cab-drivers in search of the ever-elusive Chan Hong. With a variety of hilarious jokes, looks into Chinese-American culture, and witty anecdotal substance, Chan Is Missing is a classic film, infusing a tradition of mystery and drama into Asian American narrative.