It's Occidentals playing Orientals in this dare I say choppy tale of a Tong hit-man that employs hatchets to perform his tasks. Edward G Robinson makes for an odd looking Asian Eastwood but he still manages to give a powerfully emotional performance while Loretta Young as his wife has never looked more exotically alluring.
Robinson as Wong Low Get is dispatched to kill his best friend to settle a Chinatown dispute and stave off a war between rival factions. He hesitates at first but it becomes a matter of honor and duty. Ironically the victim wills all he has including his daughter to Wong Low with the intent of having him marry her when she is of age. She consents to marriage but soon becomes involved with an old beau and runs off with him in turn ruining the now respectable business owner Wong. Taking up the hatchet he sets out for China to get her back.
Hatchet Man's episodic structure moves at a lightning pace allowing little time for smooth continuity and character development. While some of the characters have a stereotypical Fu Manchu demeanor Wellman shows respect for the culture and tradition by juxtaposing it against the crass western (gangsterism) ways being embraced by a new disrespectful generation of Chinese. Conversley he points out unrealistic archaic attitudes that are out of touch in the twentieth century which contribute to Wong's dilemma as he attempts to change with the times but maintain a balance of the honorable tradition as well. It is this tradition that brings him back to China to attempt to rescue Sun Toy in a grisly climax that's the equal of Wellman's earlier Public Enemy.
Robinson as Wong Low Get is dispatched to kill his best friend to settle a Chinatown dispute and stave off a war between rival factions. He hesitates at first but it becomes a matter of honor and duty. Ironically the victim wills all he has including his daughter to Wong Low with the intent of having him marry her when she is of age. She consents to marriage but soon becomes involved with an old beau and runs off with him in turn ruining the now respectable business owner Wong. Taking up the hatchet he sets out for China to get her back.
Hatchet Man's episodic structure moves at a lightning pace allowing little time for smooth continuity and character development. While some of the characters have a stereotypical Fu Manchu demeanor Wellman shows respect for the culture and tradition by juxtaposing it against the crass western (gangsterism) ways being embraced by a new disrespectful generation of Chinese. Conversley he points out unrealistic archaic attitudes that are out of touch in the twentieth century which contribute to Wong's dilemma as he attempts to change with the times but maintain a balance of the honorable tradition as well. It is this tradition that brings him back to China to attempt to rescue Sun Toy in a grisly climax that's the equal of Wellman's earlier Public Enemy.