To me, this movie is perfection.

One of my all time favorites.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Blistering performances.

Tai-Pan was probably too ambitious an undertaking for a film as short as just over 2 hours. Maybe a mini-series would have been the answer, but Tai-Pan certainly had the potential to be an oriental Gone With The Wind.Unrealized potential though it is. The screenplay made many references to previous events in the novel that are not shown here. We do know there's one nasty rivalry going on between Bryan Brown and John Stanton who both rose to wealth in the China trade like the protagonists in an Edna Ferber novel.Bryan Brown is the Far East version of Rhett Butler. He's built the family fortune on legal trade and illegal trade in opium. Not that opium was unknown before the British and other European powers got there, but they did turn it into a thriving business. When the Chinese government objected, the European powers took nibbles out of a prostrate and weakened state. One of those nibbles the British took was Hong Kong, spoils from the Opium War of 1841. Brown like Margaret Mitchell's Rhett Butler or the hero of many Edna Ferber books is the guy who builds what became one of the busiest trading centers on the globe.Unlike his rival Stanton, Brown's wife left him and took their small son back to the United Kingdom. Brown didn't mourn he took up with some Chinese women, they were pawns in various business negotiations. He got a son, Russell Wong, from one of them.Things get interesting when his other son arrives from Great Britain played by Tim Guinee. He's a rather uptight Victorian youth who is not pleased with the debauchery he finds and his father's part in it.Tai-Pan is exquisitely photographed with the climatic typhoon scene very well done indeed. A better screenplay would have been needed to tell this epic story.

I agree with other comments that this should have been a miniseries but on HBO not commercial TV. The scenes with the various women would have been destroyed with censorship. I believe that it did give an accurate "feel" to the times and events depicted. Upon viewing this I immediately ordered the book ( I had ignored it due to some disappointment at Nobel House ). Also bit the bullet and ordered Shogun the miniseries. Mr. Clavell's work s are to be appreciated even in movies that fall short. I do wish Bryan Brown had a better accent but Joan Chen mimicked it perfectly.The supporting cast both western and oriental were excellent. Also the "few" ships used were great. Now I want Noble House on DVD.

This film is very very bad. I saw this in a theater on opening weekend with about 10 other people. (That tell you something). Set in 1800's, the storyline is plain wacky the funniest thing is the Russian Ambassodor speaking with a down home Georgia drawl. I guess the casting people thought maybe this character was born in the Georgia region in Russia and they would speak that way. Anyway the acting is amazingly bad not helped by the lines they had to deliver. Count how many times they mention "poxed whores". By the end of the film, after a disaster that takes place, I mentioned to my companion watch the smoke will clear and it will reveal modern Hong Kong. Yep that is what happens modern Hong Kong, Or was it Singapore? Atlanta? What have you. As a good/bad movie to laugh at (like The Oscar, Valley Of The Dolls, Showgirls, The Heretic, etc.)it manages some laughs but unlike the others mentioned above, it is not uniformly hysterical as these are. There are a lot of long dull stretches especially in first half of film. 2/10 only for the Russian's accent. Recommend to avoid otherwise. Go read the book.

As a movie reviewer for my college newspaper, I often was told: "You've got a great job, you get paid to go to movies." My standard answer was: "It's not that great - I had to sit through 'Tai-Pan'." The only movie that has given me more pain was "Ishtar."