Iron Road

David Wu, a former film editor for John Woo, directs a fine international cast, including Peter O’Toole, Sam Neil, and Tony Leung Ka-Fai, in this visually vibrant epic that tells the story of the Chinese workers who built the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s.  Disguising herself as a boy, street urchin Little Tiger (rising star Sun Li, aka Betty Sun) leaves China for the Canadian Rockies in search of her long lost father. The mythic land of "Gold Mountain", she discovers, is in reality a place of racism, treachery, and deadly toil. Defying taboo, she falls in love with James Nichol (Luke MacFarlane), son of a railroad tycoon. The first co-production between China and Canada in two decades, Iron Road was inspired by the noted opera of the same name by Canadians Chan Ka Nin and Mark Brownell. Colour, Digibeta video. 177 mins.