God of Gamblers II 赌侠

The "Knight of Gamblers" (Andy Lau) from the first film now works solo, while his mentor, the "God of Gamblers," hangs out in Brazil. At the same time, the "Saint of Gamblers" (Stephen Chow), who possesses supernatural powers (for instance, he can swap cards, hypnotize people, or see them from several kilometers away), decides to get into the gambling business too, for which he ought to learn a thing or two from this very "God." The "Knight," however, has no intention of letting any riffraff get close to his teacher, but soon enough they are forced to join forces when a self-proclaimed "Knight of Gamblers" enters the scene with strong backing in the form of another telepath, Tai-Kun (John Ching).

Impressions: Well, the setup was absolutely foolproof — following the Hong Kong smashes God of Gamblers and All for the Winner, Wong Jing, true to his long-standing habit, simply decided to make a sequel to both films at once, merging their storylines into one. That is, from the God of Gamblers side we get Andy Lau and Charles Heung, while from All for the Winner comes the ever-amusing duo of Stephen Chow and Ng Man-Tat. Well, the picture certainly raked in its money (and a great deal of it), but this is hardly what fans of either film were hoping for.

First of all, there's little here that's actually funny. In theory everything should be funny, but more than half the gags are a bit embarrassing in their crudeness (just picture Ng Man-Tat with a noodle dangling from his nose, which he then "snorts" onto Stephen Chow's face), teetering on the edge of good taste. The remaining portion isn't much smoother either — I didn't notice any outright plagiarism, but here and there you sense the filmmakers' fatigue, piling mid-grade jokes into the film "for good measure" — not particularly funny, yet it feels as though the merriment never lets up. The only things really worth singling out are a couple of genuinely funny episodes, such as the brilliantly inserted (it takes you completely by surprise) parody of the first Swordsman, or Stephen Chow doing his usual Bruce Lee impersonation with two plungers tied together like nunchaku.

In general, the "tug of war" favoring Stephen Chow as the star with greater current appeal is very noticeable, and it seems his partner Andy Lau realized this too, turning in a somewhat lazy and colorless performance (as always, admittedly). No wonder that in the next installment he left the stage entirely, handing the series over to Chow's sole possession.

But back to our subject. Besides comedy, this Wong Jing series was always famous for its gambling scenes, for which Jing somehow mystically managed to dream up new tricks and gambits every time. They don't disappoint here either — despite the rather crude humor, the gambling scenes still grip you. It's just a shame that Jing never bothered to come up with a new plot for the film itself — everything follows such a well-worn formula that the tension of these games is considerably diminished by the utter predictability of each outcome (first a win, then a loss to the villain, then another win in the finale).

And on top of it all, Wong Jing pours this standard set over an equally standard set of several shootouts and a couple of duels. The fights are staged at a very high level, but the shootouts are nothing special again — just the unflappable Charles Heung running along the walls with a pistol in each hand, riddling enemies by the dozen. On the whole, there's little to say about the film — a typical Wong Jing sequel, in which he goes about "raking in the dough" in his usual way, serving up the same old thing under a new sauce. Honestly, a bit of originality and some funnier jokes wouldn't have hurt. As it stands — a middling effort, let down here and there by its sense of humor.