Anna May Wong's father is killed because he will not cooperate with a gang that smuggles illegal Chinese emigrants into the US. Miss Wong goes undercover to help Federal agent Philip Ahn track down the mysterious head of the ring.
Paramount gave Miss Wong a push upward with top billing on this B movie directed by Robert Florey. She's certainly given a splashy entrance in a spectacular Chinese costume, but despite popping in and out as she goes dance hall girl somewhere in the islands back to the US, the story is diffuse. Intercut with her, we see Ahn's slow track dealing with slow-witted goons, and a large cast of performers adding attraction to the story: Charles Bickford, Buster Crabbe, Cecil Cunningham, J. Carrol Naish, Anthony Quinn, Evelyn Brent... even though there are a lot of Chinese-American performers here, they're almost all uncredited.
It's the same sort of story that Poverty Row producers had been telling for a couple of years, with the sort of gloss that Paramount could provide mostly coming from Charles Schoenbaum's photography. Clearly they were aiming at a sort of Von Sternberg look that lends this a pre-noir air, but the script is too straightforward for much more than an entertaining flick.
