God of Gamblers 3: The Early
Stage
Reviewed by YTSL
Advance warning: Those who don’t think that
Leon Lai is half -- or even a quarter of -- the man, actor, screen presence,
etc. that Chow Yun-Fat is ought to stay far away from this “God of Gamblers”
prequel (that features not one but two suspenseful God of Gamblers competitions).
This is because -- yep, you guessed it... -- the Cantopop Sky King has the
role of Ko Chun in this 1996 work (To be precise, Leon Lai plays Ko Chun
c. 1986 in a movie that also temporarily takes the story back to 1969 to
fill in the biographical details of the man who Mr. Chow memorably portrayed
in both the original “God of Gamblers” and its 1994 sequel, “God of Gamblers
Returns”). Alternatively, I reckon that even Charles Heung himself
would have approved of -- and felt complimented by -- director, producer
and scriptwriter Wong Jing’s choice of the very capable Jordan Chan as the
man to portray a younger version of Loong Ng.
As someone who liked the earlier God of Gamblers films enough to want to
check out the entire series, I appreciated that included in the GOD OF GAMBLERS
3: THE EARLY STAGE were revelations re how Ko Chun came by his jade
ring, like of the particular brand of chocolates that he likes to eat (even
while gambling for big bucks) and choice of slick hair-style. At the
same time, because I don’t consider the previous G.O.G. movies to be all
that sacrosanct, I didn’t mind that, in at least one particularly important
and specific area (i.e., with regards to the details of when plus how Ko
Chun and Loong Ng came to know each other), this offering is most definitely
at odds with the first film. Similarly, neither was I really fussed by GOD
OF GAMBLERS 3: THE EARLY STAGE also containing certain episodes --
notably one in which Ko Chun gets shot in the head and starts acting like
a child -- which could be seen as homages (or, more negatively, as lame repetitions)
of events that occurred in that which raked in over HK$37 million at the
local box office back when top ticket prices cost just HK$30 (See Paul Fonoroff’s
“At the Hong Kong Movies”, 1998:597).
At the risk of offending fans of the first “God of Gamblers”, I’d additionally
opine that this effort -- whose general plot lines should be so familiar
as to not be worth spending time and space to detail (Suffice to say that
the film does of course climax with a tense gambling contest that involves
two rivals with more than just a professional grudge against each other)
-- has a better (utilized) supporting cast. E.g., even while it is
admittedly so that Leon Lai didn’t seem to have much chemistry with either
of this movie’s leading ladies, Anita Yuen (as an individual known as Miss
Seven, who first laid eyes on Ko Chun when the both of them were young children)
-- and also Cheung Tat Ming (as her sidekick, Ah So) -- it was who provided
GOD OF GAMBLER 3: THE EARLY STAGE with much of its comic relief while
Gigi Leung (playing Kent Hing, the nimble fingered daughter of the man who
raised Ko Chun to become a gambling ace) made for at least one pretty flower
vase.
GOD OF GAMBLER 3: THE EARLY STAGE undoubtedly additionally benefits
from having Francis Ng play Ko Ngo, another talented card player who thinks
that it is his due to be known as the best gambler in the world and wants
to reap the rewards that come with being considered to be such. Although
Cheung Ging Fai is the least familiar name and face to me of those with significant
parts to play in this surprisingly smooth-running work (particularly when
compared to the similarly large ensemble work that was “God of Gamblers Returns”),
I found him rather convincing as the Fagin-like Mr. Kent (whose name was
surely an Anglicization of a Chinese name a la Pat Neil of “Peking Opera
Blues”) who -- for a substantial period of time -- had Ko Ngo, Ko Chun and
his daughter under his wing. Further evidence of the acting depth to
be found in this film comes by way of it also having such as: Elvis
Tsui as Miss Seven’s father, Chat Foo (who is first seen in the movie preying
on amateur gamblers but “rose” to become a major Triad and owner of a chain
of mahjong parlours); Ng Chi Hung as a Triad boss on whom Loong Ng gave an
early demonstration of his martial prowess; and Moses Chan as a Indonesian
expert gambler named Soto.
Without the quality cast (and high production values) that it has, GOD OF
GAMBLERS 3: THE EARLY STAGE would have been a pretty mediocre movie.
Even with all the star power that it possesses, it still lacks the pizazz
and -- perhaps, particularly strangely enough for a Wong Jing work -- edginess
that would have made it a stand out production. To its credit though,
it doesn’t venture squarely into the realm of major bad taste nor get as
overly-bizarre as Wong Jing’s other contributions to this series (that --
depending on how people count them -- may or may not include the gambling
movies that star Stephen Chow rather than Chow Yun-Fat). All told,
I honestly do think that this made for a more enjoyable cinematic offering
(that still is not without a few interesting -- and not least because they
actually seem plausible -- plot twists and developments of its own).
My rating for the film: 7.
