Based on actual crimes committed by the Chinatown gangs of late 1980s,

September 29, 2025 admin 0 Comments

Based on actual crimes committed by the Chinatown gangs of late 1980s, Revenge of the Green Dragons is a gritty, real-life nightmare.

The Chinese tribe, which statistically has done better than most, given their Confucian values of hard work, delayed gratification and scholarship. Over half of Asians in the US have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared Americans as a whole with 28 percent and 9.1 percent of Mexican immigrants.

But the reputation of Chinese as being a model minority leaves out the sub-prime characters, like the Chinatown gangsters who are still around. The public was reminded of today’s Chinese crime syndicates during the scandalous arrest of California State Senator Leland Yee who was criminally involved with “Shrimp Boy” Chow, an ex-con and powerful Chinatown gang boss.

Revenge of the Green Dragons follows two brothers who join a Chinese gang in New York during the ’80s. Based on a New Yorker article by Frederick Dannen, the film is directly inspired by tales of ’80s and ’90s Asian-American gangs in the city. The movie is directed by Andrew Lau & Andrew Loo; Lau previously made Infernal Affairs, which Martin Scorsese remade as The Departed. (Hence Scorsese’s participation as an exec producer here.) Watch the Revenge of the Green Dragons trailer below.