REVIEW: ‘Black Mask vs. Gambling Mastermind’ (2003)

BLACK MASK VS. GAMBLING MASTER MIND must surely be the condensed form of a bad television mini-series, for how else could a film be so scattered, disjointed and dull?

The plot is completely ludicrous and tries to mash various elements from more popular Hong Kong films together, namely gambling, kung fu and child stars. Kong Lo (Lam Wai) is a Triad leader and gambling master who leaves the States after supposedly beating all comers in the Chinatowns on both coasts. He arrives in Hong Kong to challenge an old rival who has apparently already lost to two kids. The story hits one dead end when Kong Lo attempts to draw out his rival after winning a bet that results in all of guy’s casinos being shut down. This part of the story dies here and we never meet the rival.

Next, Kong Lo hires none other than old school vet Fung Hak-on to track down the two kids. Fung was once a great kung fu screen villain who had one of his best roles in John Woo’s LAST HURRAH FOR CHIVALRY. His characters were generally colorful and creepy. But here, Fung is reduced to playing pretty much a non-entity. His most entertaining contribution is mock dancing in a nightclub for a few seconds. All I can say is he must have needed the money.

Sik Siu-lung plays the elder kid named John Lo. Sik first came to prominence in the hit, SHAOLIN POPEY (1994). He appeared in a number of successive child martial arts roles that showed some promise. Sadly, this film does nothing for his career or his image as a potential martial arts star. The martial arts choreography is not up to Hong Kong standards and Sik just doesn’t look very impressive when he’s fighting, which is not very often anyway. Plus, he only shows up for any significant amount of time in the last 20 minutes of the film. The bulk of the film falls on the shoulders of one pudgy and obnoxious little kid.

I’m guessing the career of Chow Chow will be relatively short based on his unpleasant performance as a gambling prodigy with an appetite for women and an even bigger appetite for food. It doesn’t help that his voice is clearly dubbed in Cantonese by a woman. To complete the film, the viewer is forced to endure watching this little twerp roll around with women, strip for Kong Lo after losing all his money, pork out on numerous occasions, and laze about in his oversize underwear.

Then the whole gambling plot gets thrown out in favor of a long and tedious drama as Chow ends up living with two attractive girls who are competing for the same guy. This guy played by Leung Cheuk-moon is the “Black Mask” of the film who is thrown in simply to cash in on the popularity of Tsui Hark’s BLACK MASK, and without any other significant relevance. The real travesty is that we don’t even get the pleasure of watching Chow get beat senseless for not paying for a meal.

The music is all ripped from other sources including TERMINATOR. The camerawork is mostly handheld and the art direction is fairly amateurish with poor lighting, costuming and sets.

This film is about 90 minutes, but feels like an eternity and it’s mostly garbage from start to finish. There are a few mediocre fights scattered throughout, while the sloppy plot, bad acting and incredibly slow pacing makes this cinematic disaster unbearable.