Wayne Wang in Person Ostensibly the story of a nameless American hero negotiating the Wild East, Wayne Wang's fifth feature is equally a sneering portrait of cultural decay, riotously stapled to an anti-travelog of Hong Kong. The hero, a string-tied cowpoke played by San Francisco's Spencer Nakasako, is on a courier mission. Unable to find the recipient of his mysterious valise, he descends to H.K.'s underworld. Along the way, he encounters a Triad mistress (Cora Miao), the Elvis of Asia, a prostitute with a gas mask, and a blind philosopher (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