Although already released, “comedy-mystery buddy film” Detective Chinatown 1900 offers a unique and refreshing depiction of a period within US history that tends to be typecasted and misrepresented. With that in mind, we wanted to do a little detective work ourselves on what this action-packed film unpacks.

Detective Chinatown 1900 drops you into San Francisco’s Chinatown, 1900—a jagged, unpolished slice of history where a white woman’s murder threatens to set the whole district ablaze. A Chinese suspect’s in the crosshairs, and the city’s primed to riot. Qin Fu (Liu Haoran) and Ah Gui (Wang Baoqiang)—one’s sharp, the other’s a walking fuse—attempt through comedy and chaos to unravel it. And then you have Chow Yun-fat, who slides in as a silver-tongued powerbroker, and John Cusack as a slimy congressman feeding said chaos.

Director Chen Sicheng, the mind behind the Detective Chinatown web series, continues his co-director partnership with Dai Mo. The series kicked things off in 2015, spinning a Bangkok trip into a twisted murder puzzle that banked $125 million. The series—three films deep, $1.3 billion total—thrives on his mix of shadow and bite, dodging the sanitized sheen of most blockbusters.

With this prequel in particular, Sicheng brings a deeper, more historical sensibility to the Detective Chinatown universe, which until now has been set primarily in China. The shift to San Francisco is deliberate—Sicheng challenges the Hollywood cliché of the “mysterious Chinese” by centering the story on individuals who refuse to be defined by the typical narratives imposed upon them.

The film’s historical tension provides an edge, one that critiques not only the murder case at hand but also the social and racial realities of the time. By setting the story in a city where Chinese immigrants were both exploited and essential to its growth, Detective Chinatown 1900 becomes a reflection on how the past—and its forgotten histories—continue to shape contemporary narratives.

It’s a fresh, sharp take on a genre that has historically overlooked the real stories of Chinese immigrants in America. The film asks: how do we understand history when we look beyond the headlines? How do we define identity in a place that doesn’t want you to exist beyond its stereotypes? Detective Chinatown 1900 isn’t just about solving a crime—it’s about questioning the system that allows the crime to happen in the first place. It’s a noir for a new era, examining how history, race, and ambition collide in one of America’s oldest, most misunderstood neighborhoods.

Admittedly, we feel that the trailer doesn’t do the film justice, but here it is either way.

Banner image via The Hollywood Reporter.