Movie Review: God of Gamblers

Something of an undiscovered treasure in the West, God of Gamblers was a reasonable success in Hong Kong when it first hit cinemas in 1989. Starring Chow Yun-Fat, and released in the same year he headlined as The Killer, it spawned a sequel, a prequel, a spin-off and a parody in fairly short order.

Andy Lau, looking extremely young, takes second fiddle to Chow Yun-Fat, so the viewer is guaranteed some recognizable star power on screen. While behind the camera is writer/director Jing Wong whose remarkable output has been on average about five films written and three directed every since 1978.

Jing’s output is heavy on gambling flicks ( Kung-Fu Mahjong, anyone?) and a few bizarre titles including several installments of the Raped by an Angel series. It sounds like Family Guy joke, but it’s real and gives one some misgivings when sitting down to watch The God of Gamblers.

More Gambler than God

Before we bring the hammer down on whether it is any good here’s what you need to know regarding the the genre car crash that is the plot.

The set-up is this: Chow Yun-Fat plays Ko Chun, the black tie wearing God of Gamblers: a man who is either an extraordinary cheat or possessed of genuine gambling related supernatural abilities. Or both. He is asked by his opponent in the opening sequence of games to play and beat a sinister mob boss vaguely for revenge, but mostly just because plot reasons.

Unfortunately, while escaping from some of those lowlife characters, Ko Chun becomes victim of a pratfall set up by Andy Lau’s small time thief named Knife. The result of Chun’s fall is a head injury causing memory loss and regression into a childlike state. This infantilised Chun is the subject of much of the comedy.

As Knife and co try to use the gambling skills they discover Chun wields they are constantly thwarted by Chun’s childlike shenanigans. Meanwhile Chun’s old friends in the gambling world are trying to track him down in time for the big game...

Here’s the somewhat enigmatic original trailer:

The Rule of Cool

So does this mishmash of revenge, crime, action, comedy and gambling work? The answer, surprisingly is yes. The longer answer is yes, but only for the most part.

God of Gamblers is an excellent example of the rule of cool working well. The melding of high-concept ideas and high-stakes action with low life characters and the lowest of low-brow comedy mean that it mostly gets away with its sudden shifts in tone.

For example there are comedic scenes that center around Ko Chun’s childish desire for chocolate which would not be out of place on CBeebies, and others that centre around his misunderstanding of the noises in a brothel which are – shall we say – rather more adult. Or the contrast between the action scene that has Andy Lau fall three stories head first onto a tarpaulin and live and the later scene involving an attempted rape and fatal fall from a similar height.

The comedic sections do drag, with a certain amount of slapstick fatigue setting in fairly quickly after Chun’s memory goes. The film is carried through these slumps by the world-building. A word which is in a word: cool.

The crooks and gamblers exist in something that is almost but not quite recognisable as our own world, moving from gambling club to gambling club in tuxedos and limos, spinning their weird and wonderful get rich quick schemes. In this world everything has a little twist to elevate it a little above mere reality. Twists like the God of Gamblers’ low key juju which allows him to transmogrify his cards or follow the shuffle of the face down tiles in a mahjong game make the poker scenes play very differently to any other film.

On the acting front Andy Lau and Chow Yun-Fat are excellent as always, and the supporting cast do a solid job of keeping up.

In the end though, it is the final sequence that really makes the film work. The loosely plotted elements all come together in a parking lot gun fight worthy of a John Woo movie, followed by a poker showdown that is one of the most entertaining poker sequences committed to film.

Pokering in Style

The gambling scenes are actually pretty varied in terms of the games on offer with baccarat, dice games and mahjong all making a showing. The key hands however, are all played around the poker table.

When those cards are dealt, that is when the movie really comes into its own. Rather than taking the Rounders approach of trying to immerse us in the realities of the game, God of Gamblers turns gambling into an urban-fantasy sparring match, as much about the interplay of the actors’ smugly confident ‘read em and weep’ table talk as it is about showing us their hands.

These scenes work because they are not just about the competition, but about the entire mise-en-scène of these underground dives. The games are shot to be visually nifty as well as dramatically interesting, with the tools and mechanics of each game designed to work on film. The rule of cool is enforced even at the level of the choice of chip, or in the huge bricks of cash doled out of briefcases onto the table by bodyguards.

God of Gamblers certainly not going to illuminate poker for the uninitiated, but as escapist fare, it’s a lot more fun than many many recent offerings.

To Summarise

I’d recommend this highly, especially for a drunken night in with your poker pals.

I for one am looking forward to getting hold of the DVDs of God of Gamblers 2, God of Gamblers 3, and The Return of the God of Gamblers.