Movie Review: God of Gamblers II

The 1991 sequel to God of Gamblers looked a bit naff when I first picked it up. The excellent Andy Lau still playing Knife, but so is the somewhat inconsistent writer / director Jing Wong. Plenty of minor characters from the last film make a small return but notably Chow Yun Fat sat this one out, with Andy Lau taking his place and Stephen Chow stepping up as the new hapless comedy sidekick.

The plot sees Knife – now the God of Gambler’s protege and known to most of the world as the Knight of Gamblers – being pestered by The Saint of Gamblers (a crossover from 1990’s All To The Winner), who wants to meet the God of Gamblers and learn his tricks.

What follows is a series of escalating and largely unrelated shenanigans that lead the Knight and Saint of Gamblers joining forces to discredit an unscrupulous crim who is pretending trying to discredit The God of Gamblers by pretending to be the Knight. If you have trouble keeping all these Of Gamblers straight, don’t worry. None of that really matters. You’re not here for the plot.

The Sequel is Never as Good as the Originals

The first God of Gamblers was a delightful mess. The weirdness of the world was fun, even if the bizarre comedy plot was book ended by a blood soaked revenge narrative, making for some odd tonal shifts. In the sequel this messiness is ramped up to eleventy-stupid, but the tone is more consistent.

The supernatural skills of the two Of Gamblers are used to create pratfall after pratfall which are linked by only the loosest of loose threads. Minor characters – like an attractive police officer or the Kuwaiti tenant – appear briefly, are set up carefully, and then fade out of the movie.

At one point a gunfight breaks out, at another someone falls in love. Grown men wear full-body lycra swimming trunks. People play cards, other people cheat, the story moves on to something else.

In other words, it turned out to be just as it looked, i.e. a bit naff. And it really shouldn’t have worked.

And Yet...

And yet it kept me entertained. It helped that the world is still interesting. The powers of each of the Of Gamblers are better defined, as are the rules for their magic, and that definition gives the individual comedic sequences a pleasing precision that is missing from every other aspect of the movie.

Almost everything in the film is turned into a comedy sequence, many of which are extremely technically accomplished. Others are… well not. But if anything works in this film, it is the comedy which kept my interest even as the film’s plot unspooled itself into a headphone-wire style tangle on the floor.

In particular Stephen Chow (nowadays better known for Shaolin Soccer) is a great physical comedian, and a welcome addition to the team. He takes over the role Knife had in the first film, as Andy Lau moves on to be the more serious, senior, and sarcastic gambler taking over from Chow Yun Fat in the last film. Naturally, Lau does a great job.

Trump Card

There is also an odd strain of current affairs that creeps into the movie, placing the surreal world they live in in a less than timeless place. The Kuwaiti tenant talks about moving back to fight Saddam Hussein, and there is even a joke in which a character talks about becoming as rich as Donald Dump. It is odd how a stupid pun like Dump can suddenly become terrifyingly relevant again two and a half decades later.

Be warned though, the Dump gag is not even the lamest pun in the movie. Although that may be the subtitler’s fault. Depending on what edition you watch, your mileage may vary.

How is the Gambling?

The first God of Gamblers has one of my favorite poker scenes of all time. The sequel has nothing quite as good as that, but it is more consistent in its ability to keep the gambling fresh and inventive throughout. And it has way more gambling than the first, which has to count as a plus. There are only so many ‘we’ve run out of chocolate’ gags one can take.

There are still chocolate gags, but in the second outing gambling of every kind is now the main through-line of the piece. Almost every other scene has a deck of cards in it. And as the rate of gambling goes up so does the sophistication of the cheating, counter cheating, and the supernatural – be they the inability to magic up a full card or a telekinetic war over the dice in a casino.

For realistic gambling, look elsewhere; but like the first film, God of Gamblers II does a good job of making people sitting at tables feel cinematic and fun.

In Short

So, overall the comedy works well enough to paper over the films many other shortcomings. I would probably recommend it to anyone who saw the first God of Gamblers and enjoyed it. I’d probably try to be a little drunker this time round though.