The early brilliance of Wayne Wang. - By Hua Hsu - Slate Magazine

There is an acknowledgment of just how tense and mysterious Chinatown can be, but there is also a joyful tenderness when Wang lingers on a posse of ancient Filipinos at a community center shuffling to a Los Lobos record, or when an extended scene is dedicated to a chain-smoking cook wearing a form-fitting Samurai Night Fever T-shirt. The cook greets each order of sweet-and-sour pork with virginal disbelief: “I really don’t get it. Is it really that good?” he scoffs before taking a huge swallow of milk. He gives Jo and Steve no hint of where Chan is, but his spirit—the fact that the cook in the shadows, making your food, could be this charismatic—tips you into a larger mystery. Maybe there is no Chan.