"Interior Chinatown" creator Charles Yu admitted he didn't think his novel could be adapted to screen when he was first approached with the idea.

It’s a funny situation, he acknowledged when we spoke this month. “That’s something I’ve wrestled with, to be honest,” Yu said. “It’s not even necessarily a matter of selling out or not. It’s, how do you tell the story in a way that still stays true to the original impulse — while staying current with the times,

Much like the book, its adaptation offers an intense character study and in-depth analysis of the Asian American experience, delivered amidst the explosive excitement of an action-packed police procedural.