The Hatchet Man

The Hatchet Man (1932)

Runtime: 74 minutes

Directed by: William Wellman

Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, Dudley Digges, Leslie Fenton, Edmund Breese

From: First National Pictures

This movie was able to be watched by me due to the usage of a service I am trying out for the first time, and that'll be a source of at least a few of the films I see this month. This motion picture right here is unique and I'll explain why it stands out (not to mention which service I am referring to) in the Letterboxd review, which is below:

Here's another film I decided to watch at this time as it was recently seen and reviewed by someone I follow. It was something I have heard of before; it came recently when it was shown late at night on Turner Classic Movies and I wasn't able to see it. However, thanks to Warner Archive Instant (I am trying it out for a month; the lineup is appealing to me) I could now see the film.

It has to be noted that before it showed on TCM I did look at its cast listing on IMDb and knew there'd be trouble when I saw stereotypical Asian character names like “Wong Low Get”, “Sun Toya San”, and Harry En Hai” and saw that they were attached to obvious Caucasian actors. Yep, this is a movie that rather blatantly yellowfaces it up, with there not being too many in the picture that are actually Asian.

The plot revolves around the world of the Tongs in San Francisco and the title character Wong (Edward G. Robinson! For the most part he doesn't even try to look or act Chinese, which at least helped with the cringe factor) is ordered to kill his best friend, which he does. Before that best friend dies, he gives Wong his possessions... and his daughter, who he is to marry when she's legal. Yeah, weird, and insert your own Woody Allen jokes if you wish. They do marry years later and Wong is now a powerful figure who tries to act “more American”, but complications happen, including a love triangle.

The story was rather interesting, it was nicely directed by William Wellman, the set/production design was pretty good and aside from some bad performances it was well acted, especially from Robinson. It's just unfortunate that times were what they were back then and you had the casting and racism going on, with some actors being rather obviously not Asian.

That said, if you can get past that, the film is pretty entertaining and is nice as something different from the usual early 1930's norm, although Edward G. delivers a typical gangster performance from him that is quite similar to something like Little Caesar.

I'll return Sunday night.