Chinatown Video releases for November 2000
THE CONMAN aka GOD OF GAMBLERS 1999 (1999) Rated MA.
107 mins. $27.95
Wong Jing created the stuff of Hong Kong cinema legend
with his films starring Chow Yun Fat as the God of
Gamblers, the man who always smiled, never lost, and dressed to kill. In
this unrelated sequel, it seems that the Asian economic crisis has brought
out a less mythic breed of gambler. King (Andy Lau) is a
sharper whose maxim is "If you don't cheat, you are never guaranteed
to win". The downside of cheating is getting caught, and when a
mobster takes exception to King's technique the resulting melee leaves two
dead. King goes to jail for five years, and loses his partner, his wife
and the child he's never seen. All he gets in return is a head of grey
hair and a mournful harmonica soundtrack.
Eventually he's back on the streets and takes on a new partner, the
incorrigible Little Dragon (Nick Cheung). Together they
rescue Dragon's sister Ching Ching (Athena Chu) from a
swindler and then set out to make their first billion, a task which
involves a lot more Computing Logical Systems and a lot less hair gel than
Dragon had expected. When he complains, King asks him "Would you
rather be a happy loser or a boring winner?" Things get far from
boring when the malevolent Handsome (Waise Lee)
blackmails King into taking on the legendary Macau Mon (Jack Kao)
in a fifty million dollar game for his money and his life.
If you're not used to Hong Kong's no holds barred cinema, "The
Conman" may not be for you. Distressingly, director Wong characterises
not one but all of his bad gangsters and corrupt cops by their violence to
women, both threatened and real. In fact, the women in the film are all
either victims or wallpaper (and often both). This sits uneasily in the
same film that has a highly comic scam involving a faked broadcast of the
World Cup. King's range of skills have no consistent pattern, moving from
trickster to pool shark to cheater to statistician, making for an
entertaining series of vignettes but nothing approaching consistent
characterisation.
Luckily, the movie is saved by the audacity of the scams, the
wickedness of the gags, the fast pace of the plot and the some very
stylish cinematography. Nick Cheung's enjoyable
performance as the always-optimistic Dragon is worth the price of
admission, and Wong's own cameo as a crooked TV director
called Squirrel is a hoot. It's also great to see Waise Lee
in action again - those 1980s actors sure do look like original gangsters
when they hit the screen. All in all, it's a dodgy but entertaining piece
of fictional gambling - even when it's as sordid as this, it's still more
exciting than the real thing.
MONKEY! Volume 4 Rated PG. 130
mins. $22.95.
MONKEY! Volume 5 Rated PG. 130 mins.
$22.95.
Well goddam - I'm delighted to say that 20 years on this show is still
as fresh as it was then. It's lively stuff - the plots motor along, plenty
of fights with cheesy music to pep them up, a great cast of characters,
and a wok-load of goodies and baddies from Chinese mythology. I loved it
in the 1970s as a kid, and hot damn, I love it now too. Vol 4 has
the episodes "Pigsy's in the Well", "The Difference Between
Night and Day" and "Pearls Before Swine". Vol 5
contains "The Minx and the Slug", "Catfish, Saint and the
Shape- Changer" and "Monkey Meets the Demon Digger". See
the Monkey Video website for
more info.
