Thriller Snakehead rips the headlines, but also the drama, from human-trafficking tale

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Snakehead

Written and directed by Evan Jackson Leong

Starring Shuya Chang, Jade Wu and Sung Kang

Classification N/A; 89 minutes

Available digitally on-demand starting Oct. 29

Documentarian Evan Jackson Leong makes his feature film debut with this ripped-from-the-headlines tale of human trafficking in New York’s Chinatown. The story, about the rise of Sister Tse (Shuya Chang) in the crime family that brought her to America as an indentured labourer, begins with gritty scenes of her passage to New York and work in a massage parlour. (It’s based on the real story of Cheng Chui Ping or Sister Ping, the leader of a large American snakehead operation.)

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In Leong’s hasty telling, Tse soon catches the eye of the matriarch and crime boss Dai Mah (Jade Wu) and becomes a smuggler herself. Leon’s documentary realism is powerful – if tough on an audience – but his fiction skills are erratic in a film that relies too heavily on Sister Tse’s narration, much-repeated flashbacks and heavy exposition of the characters’ motivations. Chang’s determined Sister Tse veers between inscrutable and misty-eyed so it’s up to Wu as the hardened Dai Mah to anchor the criminal action. She does it with aplomb.

In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a Critic’s Pick designation across all coverage.