Schlësselwuert Opium

A prominent North Carolina fishing family wades into treacherous waters to keep their crumbling business empire afloat.

Henry Drax is a harpooner and brutish killer whose amorality has been shaped to fit the harshness of his world, who will set sail on a whaling expedition to the Arctic with Patrick Sumner, a disgraced ex-army surgeon who signs up as the ship’s doctor. Hoping to escape the horrors of his past, Sumner finds himself on an ill-fated journey with a murderous psychopath. In search of redemption, his story becomes a harsh struggle for survival in the Arctic wasteland.

China is in unrest, as the Republic falls prey to Warlords like Kahn Xin, who holds an entire province hostage to the opium trade—and destroys all who oppose him. Only the revered Wudang monks dare stand in Kahn’s way in order to protect the very soul of China. Among them is the Westerner, White Crane, a spiritual master of the martial arts and protector of the innocent. Revenge is not in Crane’s heart—until a mercenary army storms the temple and slaughters the beloved female Grandmaster Myling. Out of the ashes of the temple ruins, Crane rises—with vengeance in his heart. Crane comes upon Jane Marshall, a New York lounge singer and her gangster boss Bingo Quo. But it’s Bingo’s dangerous professional ties to Kahn that draw both Crane and Jane deep into the Warlord’s lair. Now torn between the spiritual Wudang teaching and the cold-blooded life of an assassin, Crane is about the cross the fine line between justice and revenge.

History of the narcotics trade in Burma and the War on Drugs. In 1964, director Adrian Cowell and cameraman Chris Menges went to mountainous eastern Burma to film the Shan revolutionary forces fighting a bloody civil war against the military dictatorship. The impoverished Shans had only one way to finance the war: opium. Cowell has returned several times over the last 30 years to record the ongoing civil war and the burgeoning opium trade. The first and last episodes are produced in association with WGBH/FRONTLINE.