What did I just see? This is probably the most insane film I've ever seen. It's not the sort of madness that you find in Japanese films such as the ones made by Sion Sono. That's madness that makes sense. "From Vegas to Macau 3" contains random elements that make no sense at all. I'll do my best to describe the film, but I fear I might have misunderstood things in the general chaos.
Ko Chun is known as the God of Gamblers. The film begins with the wedding of his only daughter. This breaks his heart, because his daughter is the only person he truly loves. (I assume his wife was killed in one of the previous films). His best friend Ken hypnotises him to believe that it's his cousine getting married instead. Now Ko is happy, but it confuses people when he talks about his cousine's marriage at the reception. Unfortunately the wedding turns into a tragedy. A walking bomb disguised as a wedding guest explodes, killing the bride and driving Ko temporarily insane.
Ko is invited to the birthday party of an arms dealer called J.C. who is suspected of being responsible for the bomb. He is in no state to go to the party, so Ken uses a universal transformer to make himself look like Ko and go to the party in his place. Casino games with stakes as high as $300 million are being played at the party. Ken is unable to gamble as skilfully as Ko, but he hypnotises everyone to see the cards and dice that he wants them to see.
We soon find out the reason for J.C. killing Ko's daughter. In the previous film J.C.'s lover Molly fell out of a plane, for which he blames Ko. Molly is being held alive in a large tank full of fluid. J.C. intends to use his party as an opportunity to kill Ko, not realising that it's really Ken.
That summary might not sound overly crazy, but there are so many random things happening. There are robots who fall in love with one another. There is kung fu fighting. There are cream pie fights. There are dinosaurs. One man has to fight eight identical clones of himself. A high security prison is attacked by a paramilitary force. Every now and then everyone stops fighting and breaks into song, as if this were a Bollywood film.
The film is confusing, but it's very good. Now I want to see the first two parts.
If you go back (eventually) to watch the first two parts, you're only halfway there. This was a sequel trilogy, following the God Of Gamblers trilogy (from 20 years earlier? Has it been that long? That's a top-of-my-head number, and probably not accurate)
ReplyDeleteBut you've got to take care - there are two different GOG3s (Not to be confused with GOTG3, of course) GOG3: The Early Years is the Chow Yun Fat sequel while GOG3: Back To Shanghai is the Stephen Chow SingChi sequel. Two Very different films. (But check out Back To Shanghai - time travel fun with a Gong Li bonus)
Both actors were in GOG2, but it was a sequel to two different movies. The Chow Yun Fat original and Stephen Chow parody, All For The Winner, in which he played the Saint Of Gamblers. That actually made more money than the original film, so they wound up merging for the sequel.
Keeping track after that point gets messy.
Thanks for the information. It's been seven years, and I'd almost forgotten about this film. I finally need to go back and watch the other films in the series. A quick glance at Wikipedia doesn't tell me much. I need to check out fan pages if it's as messy as you say.
Delete