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Western correspondents in Chongqing probing the background to the spectacular fall from grace of city boss Bo Xilai have found themselves pondering who to cast if this tale was a film noir. Robert De Niro, perhaps? Or might there be a role for Edward G Robinson? Certainly there is something about the extraordinary mixture of populism, demagoguery, organised crime, corruption and large-scale money-making in one of the world's biggest urban regions, more than 30 million people and still growing, that recalls the dark landscape of American gangster movies or makes observers go further back to reach for Dickens or Balzac.