cover


Rating:

5


AKA: The King of Gambler, The King of Gamblers, Anxious to Return

Year of release: 1981

Genre: gambling

Director: Cheng Kang

Action director: Ching Siu-Tung

Writers: Cheng Kang, Li Yung Chang, Shih Tu An

Producer: Mona Fong

Cinematographer: Li Hsin Yeh

Editors: Chang Hsing Lung, Chang Shao Hsi

Music: Eddie Hwang

Stars: Chan Ping, Chung Wa, Danny Lee, Ngaai Fei, Shirley Yu, Nau Nau, Wang Chung, Shum Lo, Chan Shen,Yeung Hung, Chow Kin Ping

Not rated; contains IIB-level violence and nudity


VCD Information

Company: Celestial

Format: widescreen

Languages: Cantonese, Mandarin

Subtitles: Chinese/English (electronically printed on lower black bar)

Extras: trailers

Notes: Another solid effort from Celestial.


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Danny Lee biography
Movie Review index
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Gambler's Delight

Gambler's Delight

In Gambler's Delight, Danny Lee plays a gambler named Dragon, who is hired by a casino in Macau to investigate Madam Jin (Chan Ping), a mysterious woman who has been cleaning out the local gaming establishments. Dragon suspects Jin of cheating, but cannot stop her from making a killing at the blackjack table, so he challenges her to a one-on-one "duel". Even though Dragon is a good gambler, he is no match for Jin, who not only wins the game, but whips him as well. Heading back to Hong Kong in disgust, Dragon enlists the aid of his friends in order to set an elaborate trap for Jin.

Gambler's Delight is pretty much par for the course of a Hong Kong gambling movie. The viewer knows the heroes are going to win the climatic game or pull of the big ruse -- the fun with these types of films is seeing how the climax is set up. Things seem almost too complex here -- Dragon and his crew use blackmail and robbery to raise HK$10 million to open up a club and then use some sort of strange horse racing film betting game to try and trick Jin... one would think that the ten million would be quite enough (especially when you consider that's in 1981 dollars) and the group wouldn't have really had to go through the trouble of opening a club.

Gambler's Delight

And this might seem strange to some people who have read my other reviews, but I actually didn't much like the violence and nudity displayed here. I'm not adverse to some boobs and blood when they fit the movie, but does a gambling picture need a series of plain-looking women showing full frontal nudity for no reason except to add "production value", or, worse yet, a scene of a man getting his penis severed and then having the organ cooked and served up? If the rest of the movie was played for laughs or it was a Wong Jing "everything goes" flick, I might have understood the exits to exploitation boulevard, but as such, they -- and the movie as a whole -- feel a bit cheap and tawdry.

Still, the good does outweigh the bad here. Gambler's Delight has a nice visual flair that stands out against many of the Shaw Brothers movies, which tended to have a "flat" look to them, both because of the filiming techninques and generic sets. The actors, for the most part, do a good job. This is some of Danny Lee's better work from the early part of his career, and Chan Ping plays the "dragon lady" role to a tee without going over the top. Overall, Gambler's Delight is a solid Hong Kong gambling movie, but long-time fans of the genre have probably seen this kind of thing done many times before.

Gambler's Delight