Saint of Gamblers, The (1995) Review

“The Saint of Gamblers” DVD Cover

Director: Wong Jing
Cast: Eric Kot, Chingmy Yau, Ben Lam, Ng Man Tat, Diana Pang Dang, Shing Fui On, Ashton Chen, Bobby Yip, Nat Chan Pak Cheung, Hui Si Man, Pauline Yeung, Donnie Yen, Corey Yuen Kwai, Andy Cheng Kai-Chung
Running Time: 96 min.

By Paul Bramhall

While the Hong Kong gambling movie has been around for several decades, chances are if you ask someone to name one of them, the default answer will be the 1989 classic God of Gamblers, and understandably so. One of Wong Jing’s finest moments in the director’s chair (some would probably say the finest moment), the casting of Chow Yun Fat as the chocolate loving card sharp would result in what can best be described as a God of Gamblers universe (long before Marvel and DC!) that stretched across (at my last count) 13 movies. 

Concluding with From Vegas to Macau 3 in 2016, everything that came in-between either involved supporting characters from the original (and as the years passed by, supporting characters from the follow-ups!), characters related to earlier entries in the series (Louis Koo playing the successor to Andy Lau’s Knight of Gamblers in Conman in Tokyo), or re-cast key characters all together (Leon Lai replacing Chow Yun Fat’s role in God of Gamblers 3: The Early Stage). Made in a world where such things as official sequels and spin-offs didn’t really exist, the series makes for interesting viewing purely to appreciate how wild Hong Kong cinema could get. To put things in perspective, just a couple of years after the original, in 1991 we had Stephen Chow travel back in time to 1930’s Shanghai in God of Gamblers 3: Back to Shanghai.

Stephen Chow was also the star of the first God of Gamblers cash-in, All for the Winner, which hit the screens in 1990. Chow plays a mainlander who comes from a village where everyone has supernatural powers, and meets up with his uncle played by Ng Man-Tat in Hong Kong. Once Man-Tat realises Chow’s special gifts, naturally he exploits them through a series of increasingly ridiculous gambling scenes. What’s most interesting about All for the Winner is that it’s actually a completely separate movie from God of Gamblers, however characters from it (namely Man-Tat’s uncle) would start turning up in future instalments which were connected to God of Gamblers, retroactively making it part of the canon. This is more than likely because Stephen Chow would be cast as the lead in God of Gamblers II the same year, and his and Man-Tat’s pairing was a priceless one.

The reason behind this brain melting journey into the God of Gamblers universe is to explain the existence of 1995’s The Saint of Gamblers, which is in fact a sequel to All for the Winner, the very first spin-off to God of Gamblers that was originally its own stand-alone story. By 1995 it was fair to say audiences were suffering from GoG-fatigue, however Wong Jing is never one to lay a cash cow out to pasture until he’s drained every last drop of milk from it, hence more gambling shenanigans were unleashed onscreen. However The Saint of Gamblers wasn’t able to bring back any of the big Hong Kong names that had anchored previous entries – Chow Yun Fat (who Jing finally convinced to return to the series in the previous years Return of the God of Gamblers), Andy Lau, and Stephen Chow all clocked out, so instead the starring role is given to Eric Kot.

If you’ve never heard of Eric Kot it’s entirely forgivable. As a comedic actor he has a somewhat grating persona and rarely found himself in lead roles, with perhaps the highlight of his filmography anchoring Edmond Pang Ho-Cheung’s directorial debut You Shoot, I Shoot in 2001. Here he plays a villager from the same village Stephen Chow came from in All for the Winner. When Man-Tat returns to the village to find another gambling protégé after Chow goes his own way at the end of All for the Winner, he stumbles across Kot, who seems to be the village idiot (non-spoiler: he is). Despite barely being able to string a sentence together, Kot’s supernatural powers clearly rival those of Chow, making him a sure-fire fit to utilise in the world of gambling, and soon the pair are Hong Kong bound.

There’s little mistaking that The Saint of Gamblers is Wong Jing working to the lowest common denominator, however what it lacks in integrity is arguably made up for by the sheer manic pacing that’s maintained for the duration its onscreen. This is Hong Kong everything and the kitchen sink filmmaking at its finest, where coherency and structure are alien concepts. At one point a journalist asks Kot what kind of movies he likes, to which he replies “Wong Jing”, earning him a reprimand from Man-Tat who lambasts him by asking “Why do you say Wong Jing? His movies are so cheap, say Wong Kar-Wai!” It’s a throwaway scene, but also an indication that Jing is fully aware when he’s making crap, the important thing for the audience is that he’s at least committed to making entertaining crap.

That essentially sums up The Saint of Gamblers, as a movie it barely has any merits, however as an injection of Hong Kong cinematic adrenaline it has the desired effect. Jing does well to surround Kot with familiar faces, offering up an antagonist in the form of Ben Lam (Seven Warriors, Angry Ranger), a love interest in the shape of Chingmy Yau (Naked Killer, Lover of the Last Empress), and since it’s a mid-90’s Wong Jing flick, we also get a kung fu kid played by Sik Siu-Lung (Shaolin Popey and its sequel). For Cat III aficionados, Saint of Gamblers is also the HK debut of Diana Pang Dan (Evil Instinct, The Imp), cast as a scantily clad (did you expect anything less from Wong Jing?) Thai gambling champion who uses her powers of seduction to place her competitors into a submissive trance.

Interestingly for a director who frequently worked with the same cast, this would be the only time for Jing to work with Siu-Lung, with his pint-sized kung fu prodigy of choice usually going to Xie Mao (who was starring alongside Jet Li in the Wong Jing produced My Father Is a Hero during the same year). Dion Lam’s energetic action choreography gives both Siu-Lung and Ben Lam their moments in the spotlight to shine, however the most interesting addition to the cast is an action cameo from Donnie Yen. After falling out with his mentor Yuen Woo-Ping over creative differences on Wing Chun the year prior, in 1995 Yen was already relegated to Filipino cheapies like Asian Cop: High Voltage. 

What’s less well known is that he signed a contract with Wong Jing, and The Saint of Gamblers was his first appearance for Jing’s production company Wong Jing’s Workshop Ltd. The following year he’d feature in Satan Returns, after which he broke his contract and went his own way, resulting in the pair never working together again until 2017’s Chasing the Dragon. Yen’s appearance is brief, amusingly playing the special agent brother of Charles Heung’s character from the original God of Gamblers, but his 2 short action sequences offer one of the first looks at what would become Yen’s distinctive action style (undercranking included). I’d be willing to wager that Dion Lam stepped aside and let Yen choreograph his own action scenes, which certainly wasn’t a bad decision based on the quality of what’s onscreen.

For those who know what they’re getting themselves into when watching a comedic gambling flick helmed by Wong Jing, chances are The Saint of Gamblers will deliver exactly what you’re looking for. It’s manic, has no filter, and throws so much ridiculousness at the screen that anyone uninitiated with the world of Hong Kong cinema will probably be left questioning their reality. Quality is not really a word that belongs in any discussion on The Saint of Gamblers, however it does entertain. Wong Jing may never be Wong Kar-Wai, but for most of us, we wouldn’t want him to be.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 6/10