Safe Bet
What’s that saying? Tragedy and comedy are two sides of the same coin? Exhibit A: ‘No More Bets’.
No More Bets
Director: Shen Ao • Writer: Shen Ao, Xu Luyang, Zhang Yifan
Starring: Zhang Yixing, Gina Chen, Wang Chuanjun, Yong Mei, Darren Wang, Sunny Sun, Zhou Ye
China • 2hrs 10mins
Opens Hong Kong September 21 • IIB
Grade: C
No More Bets | 孤注一擲 is a hot mess, but make no mistake: I had a great time watching it. Unlike the inept Onpaku, which is still at the top of the list for worst of 2023, No More Bets is not bad. It’s polished and energetic, with attractive leads, dastardly charming villains and innocent pussy cats (gangsters lob one off a balcony while trying to collect a debt in one of the film’s high-/lowlights). There’s some lovely location shooting by DOP Wang Tianxing, and though it’s over two hours long, it moves at a decent pace for most of the time. The problem is the laughable hysterics of it all and the shameless scare-mongering, capped off by the requisite police services love-in (“When I saw the blue uniforms of the police I knew I was saved. I want to thank them!” says a real life scam victim in the epilogue). The fraud cops got there guys, but I’m still getting goddamned phone messages calling me “Sir” and offering big wins on small bets.
As a crime thriller, No More Bets has a totally modern premise, based on reality: it follows a moderately effective cop, Zhao Dongran (Yong Mei) as she tracks a crime syndicate that’s mining data, taking advantage of vulnerable and/or naïve people, and cleaning them out via mobile digital casinos with help from trafficked high value workers, lured by promises of fancy transnational jobs (mistake No. 1). One is Pan Sheng (Chinese “flag guardian” and Exo rapper Zhang Yixing), a computer whiz who quits his safe job and takes a mysterious gig with a gaming company when he’s passed over for a promotion (ambition, mistake No. 2). Instead he’s whisked off to… Thailand? Macau? Myanmar? India? Oh! “Ganan” (or was it Canan? The subtitles kept changing), and forced to slave away in a fraud factory with dozens of other Chinese nationals who were similarly hoodwinked, including former model Anna Liang (Gina Chen Jin), who works in the virtual casino. She’s a honeypot for the massively unlikeable and idiotic Gu Tianzhi (Taiwanese actor Darren Wang Dalu), who we’re told holds a master’s degree. See? We’re all vulnerable to these swindlers!
You had a job!
A mammoth box office hit in China (it’s racked up about US$500 million), No More Bets traffics in every scare-mongering tactic it can dredge up, but neuters them by being so clumsily and frantically presented it’s hard to take it seriously. The morals of the story are simple: Don’t be greedy, be happy with the job you have and, whatever you do, don’t leave China. Any combination of the three will result in torture, humiliation, anguish and a busted shin. A similar message was carried by another box office hit this year, Lost in the Stars (someone’s clueing into the hazards of gambling, I see. Watch your back, Macau). But getting to the morals is hilarious.
Running the fraud show is Lu Bingkun (Wang Chuanjun, Hidden Blade), whose daughter goes to the school the fraud factory is in, I think? Is it in the basement? Unclear. His right hand is the sadistic An Juncai (Sunny Sun Yang), who enjoys ripping ears and putting screws in heads – but who has a crush on Anna. Even the hardest of hard cases gets woozy at the whiff of romance. While they’re slaving away in Ganan (ha ha!) Gu is losing his shit and gambling his life away, much to the distress of his fiancée of four months, Song Yu (Zhou Ye). It’s Song who goes to Zhao with “evidence” (gurl, you can use my phone for that) because she just can’t get through to him. He’s stealing from his friends, his grandmother, putting his parents home in hock… Tragedy ensues; Gu goes off a balcony with the cat, but screws even that up.
And this shit is tragic. We’ve all heard stories of people losing their homes and families because of gambling debts or scams – aside from the scams big banks run on us all, but that’s another story. Gu’s speedy downward spiral is a riot, but it’s also supposed to be our case study and entry point. As directed by Shen Ao (My Dear Liar, another scam drama) it’s more comedy than cautionary tale. There’s lots of eye-bugging and frantic phone tapping to telegraph his distress; Wang’s twitchiness when his parents stage an intervention by giving him a … gulp … Nokia is priceless. The second half of the film flies by in a frenzied, often incomprehensible flurry of fake ATM cards, piles of US greenbacks, almost successful messages (damned service industry workers!), bodies stuffed in burlap sacks and tossed into the ocean and secret “6” binary signals before running out of steam when Anna escapes to the safety of Xinjiang (!) and gets Zhao and her official crime-busters involved.
But the true fatal error of No More Bets is in its moral sincerity, as opposed to (for example) the caustic irony of Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, which this most closely resembles (or hopes to). There’s plenty of material to explore here – the personal dissatisfaction that lures professionals, the social demands for material wealth, the legal grey areas of “special economic zones” where these factories proliferate, but nah. No time for that. The film makes a half-hearted attempt at giving Anna and Pan agency, but ultimately they need the po-po to come get them. Then we get a lecture. It’s to be expected, but it drains the film of the corny amusement it generated early on, and nips what could have been an OTT Reefer Madness for the digital age in the bud. — DEK