It was one of the more dramatic incidents in recent Myanmar history.
Sai Naw Kham, a Shan druglord sometimes referred to as the Godfather, operated in the Golden Triangle but his luck ran out after he was implicated in the murders of 13 Chinese sailors in 2011.
Responding to public anger, China launched a full-fledged manhunt in cooperation with regional governments, capturing Naw Kham and executing him by lethal injection along with three others in 2013.
The events have now been reconstructed in a new Chinese blockbuster, “Operation Mekong.” According to a review in Variety, the movie is topping the charts in China, although whether it sticks to the truth is another matter.
“How straightforward your enjoyment of the film will be largely depends on your ability to read ‘based on’ as ‘very loosely inspired by’ and to immediately forget that some of these archetypes and stock genre characters have real-life (and real-death) counterparts,” the reviewer wrote.
In any case, you can judge for yourself here in Yangon, as the movie is playing in several theatres downtown.
