Shanghai

 

John Cusack stars in this romantic thriller about an American man returns to a corrupt, Japanese-occupied Shanghai four months before Pearl Harbor and discovers his friend Connor, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, has been killed. While he unravels the mysteries of the death, he falls in love and discovers a much larger secret that his own government is hiding.

Mikael Hafstrom, who directed 1408, which also starred Cusak, will also direct Shanghai, which is currently filming in Cha Choeng Sao, and other locations in Thailand.

The film will be released in North America on Christmas Day 2008.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan Dying For Role In ‘Shanghai’
Published by Shawn Adler Monday, August 18, 2008
http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/08/18/jef....le-in-shanghai/

There’s an old showbiz saying that goes, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” True enough… unless you’re Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

“I keep dying!” the “Watchmen” star laughed. “I need to find different ways to die.”

Morgan gets to try, try again in the just completed ‘Shanghai,” he told MTV News, where (spoiler warning if this is 1988), the action of the film, like that in “Watchmen,” is set into motion by his character’s death.

“I play [John Cusack's] best friend and, again, the movie kind of hinges on my death. I seem to die of a lot of stuff,” the genial 42-year-old said of his character in the period drama.

Morgan’s character in “Watchmen,” of course, gets killed before the graphic novel even begins, his death the catalyst that sends Rorschach into full-on conspiracy mode. Maybe Cusack should start taking notes? In “Shanghai,” Morgan discovers secrets the US government has been keeping about the Japanese war machine, which somehow all tie into the evens of Pearl Harbor.* That, in turn, leads him to getting killed, in turn, leading Cusack to the Chinese mainland.

“It’s what leads up to Pearl Harbor. The Japanese are occupying China at the time and its right before obviously the attack on the Americans. You’ll see me in flashbacks I kind of stumble on some stuff that’s happening in China with what the Japanese are up to and it kind of inspires the whole story to happen,” Morgan said. “Kind of like ‘Watchmen’ actually - it runs a little parallel there.”

* For a short post on this aspect of the story, please visit DEEP BACKGROUND here:
http://jdsgirlbev.proboards55.com/index.....und&thread=1204