The literal translation of the title of this movie is: The Assignment of Blue Sword.
The movie is loosely based on the true story, but it is not realistic enough, and one was the main reason was finance:
In reality, the Professor and his family actually immigrated to USA from Taiwan legally, had a business in Taiwan based on the fruits of his academic research. However, the local gangsters tried to assassinate him when he refused to their racketeering, and the gangsters went as far as attempting on the professor's family's lives in USA via its members in Los Angeles and New York. Due to the loopholes of Common Law Code, and the carefulness of the gangsters, there was little the police can do. The problem is that unless the victims are confronted by the suspects, USA & Taiwanese cops could not do anything, but such confrontation with ruthless gangster would certainly spell the death of the family members of the professor, or professor himself.
This part of the true story was not shown in the movie because in the 1980's, the reform had not spread to the Chinese financial sectors and there was extremely tight foreign exchange control in China. Furthermore, China did not have much foreign exchange anyway, and neither did private citizens. As a result, the film crew could not went to USA to film the story as it actually was due to lack of US dollars, and there was no place in China resembling such American cities so the story had to be changed to the one in the movie, happening in mainland.
As China opened up to foreign investment in the era of the reform, the professor set up business in China. The gangsters also followed his family to China via its Hong Kong members. Since China had not joined the International Police Organization, and there was no cooperation between USA, Taiwan & Chinese law enforcement establishments, the tasks of protecting the professor and his family fell solely on Chinese cops, and this is the second reason why this movie deserves a big thumb down:
The British intelligence used the local Chinese gangsters as source of intelligence, since its members spreads all over Hong Kong, Taiwan and USA. Furthermore, the gangsters were viewed by British as a force to fight communists, such as during the Cultural Revolution, local Hong Kong Red Guards clashed with and defeated by the local gangsters, partially helped the British Authority and Hong Kong avoiding the disastrous Cultural Revolution like China had suffered.
This part is also willfully ignored because China was negotiating with UK for the return of Hong Kong in 1997, facing the past history honestly would be considered by Chinese government as not constructive for the talks of the negotiation of the return, so any potential negative influence must be eliminated. As a result, governmental censorship forced this part to be left out and the intrigues of cross Formosa Strait espionage agents were used as substitution.
As a combination of lack of hard currency and governmental censorship, the supposedly good film lost its originality.
