Shadow of China (1990)

John Lone, the star of the Oscar-winning The Last Emperor (89), portrays a Chinese revolutionary in Shadow of China. Pursued by the Communists, Lone escapes to Hong Kong, where he builds up a multimillion dollar business enterprise. He hopes to use his international clout to effect changes in Mainland China, but he is defeated by revelations of his earlier underhanded business practices, and by the "dangerous" aspects of his previous political activities.


Motivated by the surprising international success of Bertouccis' "Last Emperor", which was shot on location in China with an all-asian cast and still managed to gross 100 million $ worldwide, a group of of japanese investors along with american producers and Nippon Herald and Fuji TV got together to put this 10 million dollar shot in HK project together.
They picked Mitsuo Yanagimachi as the director after he presented a screen treatment, that was then turned into a full screenplay by american writer Richard Maxwell, based on the novel by Masaaki Nishiki and gave Yanagimachi all the liberties he wanted.
The goal was to add American rhythms and plot structure onto a Japanese movie.

'''Shadow of China' represents an attempt to make a movie that can be commercially successful beyond Japan without turning its back on Japanese culture."

There's no DVD available of this film.