Those of you who think of Wayne Wang as a sweet-tempered director of Asian-American films like Chan Is Missing and Eat A Bowl of Tea, get ready for his tangy side. Ostensibly the story of a nameless American hero negotiating The Wild East, Wang's fifth feature is equally a sneering portrait of cultural decay, riotously stapled to an anti-travelogue of Hong Kong. The hero, a string-tied cowboy played by San Francisco's Spencer Nakasako, is on a courier mission. Unable to find the recipient of his mysterious valise, the pseudo-cowpoke descends to H.K.'s underworld. Along the way, he encounters a Triad mistress (played by Cora Miao), the Elvis of Asia, a prostitute with a gas mask, and a blind philosopher, played by local favorite Victor Wong. These Arbus-like oddballs are placed within an imploding narrative, detonated by lush, violent images-flash-frames of a severed hand, bound ducks flapping in a slaughterhouse . Cross-breeding the mythos of the Western with the steely gaze of the gangster film Wang has corralled his most ambitious, most elliptical, and certainly darkest film yet. Life Is Cheap tallies up the excesses of traditional Chinese culture and sees it as a dim sum. --Steve Seid