Shanghai Triad.

 First, there are no "Shanghai Triads". Triads is the name specific for the Hong Kong mobsters. An original name for the movie was the beginning of the Chinese lullaby "Row and row, past the mother-in-law bridge", which, if my Western perception is correct, can mean either "Escape from the clutches of the family" or "You soon will be adult, girl". 

Roger Ebert with his characteristic dissing of good movies, which earned him a status of a sublime intellectual among Los Angeles crowd, noticed very uneven tempo of the movie. It has lengthy expositions of nature in the absence of screen action--though there are Chinese songs he cannot understand in the background--and the breakneck speed of the last 20 minutes. He is, of course, right. But this does not subtract from its powerful emotional message. 

This is one of the few movies, for which I wished if not the American-style happy end, but at list happier end, or at least the ending with more ambivalence. In the masterpiece of Coppola's "Godfather" there is a deliberate juxtaposition between Don Vito and Mickey Corleone. The first is a person of principles and honor, who can be generous without reciprocity, for woman who has to be evicted because of her dog, or for mob-loving artist modeled on Frank Sinatra. Mickey is a psychopath, who cares for nobody and nothing except power. Even his son, whom he adores, has to grow without his mother and without anything except material wealth and comfort--the only things Mike Corleone understands. 

The Boss Tang of the "Shanghai Triad" seem to begin like Vito--cruel, but following his own code of fairness and honor--but suddenly turns into psychopath who cold bloodedly executes his mistress, his hostess on his "safe house" island (and, earlier, her boyfriend) and makes her underage daughter into his sex slave. This can be very true--the world of organized crime is a magnet for violent psychopaths--though some, like Cheney and Stalin graduate into high politics, and useful in the sense that the movie does not romanticize the mob. However, because psychopaths are inscrutable--there is nothing to explain except that there are people who receive pleasure from hurting other people--no psychologic complication can transpire.