Fate Fighter
Director: Steve Cheng
Rating: 4.5
Year: 2003
This was disappointing. It is directed by Steve
Cheng who made some terrific horror films back around the same time as this
and I was hoping for another one. But as they say comedy is hard and that
is what this film purports to be. If there were laughs within, they escaped
my notice. Ok. maybe a guffaw or two but otherwise I watched this as I would
traffic passing by. It stars Nick Cheung whose appeal has also eluded me.
At one point they were trying to make him the next Stephen Chow but that
didn't go over well and it wasn't really until Johnnie took him into some
of his films Breaking News, Election 1 & 2, Exiled that he took on some
depth and got serious. I want to like him more than I do because he has been
in a lot of Hong Kong films and some of them are supposed to be very good.
His monotone here could be a sleep cure.
The plot never quite made sense to me - but here goes. A wealthy man is told
by his fortune teller Master Ko (Joe Junior) that he has to have a son for
good luck. So he has sex with his wife and maid (Amanda Lee) on the same
night and nine months later on the same day each has a boy. Master Ko says
one will be blessed with good luck and the other is a jinx. And so he is
- the father loses all his money and commits suicide - the maid takes her
son way - he is the blessed one - and the other son becomes an orphan. Tin-yat
(Alex To) grows up to have everything he wants - he wins at every type of
gambling game. Four-taels (Cheung) grows up poor looked after by his Uncle
Three (Alfred Cheung) and the little neighbor girl Fa who grows up to be
Kristy Yeung. And so it goes for years. Four-taels seems to have enormous
gambling skills but doesn't like using them.
But as they approach their 30th birthdays Master Ko tells Tin-yat that his
luck will go bad unless he steals the luck of his half-brother. And the film
really goes off the rails when Four-taels is kidnapped by a rival to Tin-yat
- brought to a gambling institution - befriended by Sam Lee who seems to
enjoy oral sex with bananas - they escape together but he can not escape
his fate. Also, nothing is as it appears to be. His whole life is a
sham. The gambling game is a new one to me. Throw up a deck of cards and
grab ones coming down to form your hand. Give that a go at home. It will
end with about 51 cards on the floor but you can't do it in slow motion most
likely. The plot is too strange and stupid and the comedy is missing in action.
Cheng should have stuck with horror.
