In 1989, the success of Wang Jing's director "God of Gamblers" allowed many Hong Kong directors to see the gambling film market in The Asian film market, and in 1990, Liu Zhenwei's partner Stephen Chow's "Gamblers" added nonsense comedy elements on the basis of "God of Gamblers", which was a great success in Hong Kong and broke the Box Office record in Hong Kong.
Subsequently, Wang Jing immediately pulled chen Daozai (Andy Lau), the apprentice of Gao Jin, the god of gambling in "God of Gamblers", to prepare to shoot a "Gambler" to fight against Liu Zhenwei's "Gamblers", at that time, Andy Lau was already a national idol who was popular throughout Asia, and Wang Jing was already the most successful commercial film director in Hong Kong. But in order to make the movie more selling, Wang Jing still found a "gambling saint" Zhou Xingchi to make a cameo, wanting to try to add nonsense comedy to the movie.
The original story theme of the movie "Gambler" is that the god of gambling is high into playing the world, the apprentice gambler Chen Daozai, accompanied by Dragon Five, re-emerges on behalf of the god of gambling, devotes his gambling skills to global charity, and encounters the gambling demon Chen Jincheng's righteous son Husai to take revenge, and defeats Hussey with the help of gambling Saint Ah Xing.
The gambler played by Andy Lau in the film is the absolute male number one, while the gambler played by Stephen Chow is only the gambler's helper to help him get through the difficulties when he encounters an opponent cheating with special functions. But as soon as Stephen Chow came out with his unique nonsense comedy, he completely overshadowed Andy Lau's limelight and acted too brilliantly.
At that time, Andy Lau's acting skills were still slightly immature, and there were more handsome scenes in the movie. At this time, although Zhou Xingchi had just opened his reputation in the Hong Kong film circle with "Gamble Saint", his performance was more than enough, as long as there was a picture of his appearance, it was very eye-catching.
After the film was filmed, Wang Jing weighed it up, and immediately let Zhou Xingchi make up for it, changing the film to a double male protagonist, and the storyline was also changed: A Xing has always worshiped the gambling god Gao Jin and has always wanted to worship him as a teacher, but he is suffering from no chance, so by chance, he found the gambler Chen Daozai to introduce, the two competed with each other but felt sorry for each other, and finally the two also faced the framed by the gambling demon Hussey, and Kuang Fu Zheng defeated the opponent. At the end of the movie, the god of gambling, Gao Jin, appears even more and collects Axing as an apprentice, so far, the god of gambling, the saint of gambling, and the gambler are perfectly connected.
At that time, the filming cycle and production cycle of Hong Kong films were very short, and the film was released in less than 3 months, but it was well received after its release. The final box office of "Gambler" in Hong Kong was HK$40.34 million, ranking second in Hong Kong's annual box office rankings, second only to Stephen Chow's other "Gambler" at the beginning of the year.
However, after the release of this movie, the most discussed by the audience is not the gambler in the "Gambler" movie, or the gambler played by Stephen Chow, who after his appearance, completely overshadowed Andy Lau, who was already a national idol at that time. Stephen Chow's perfect combination of nonsense comedy and gambling films laid the development direction of Hong Kong gambling films, and after that, all hong Kong gambling films no longer emphasized gambling skills and gun battle action scenes, but took the combination of nonsense comedy and gambling as the main focus.
And Chow Xingchi, who was originally called to make a cameo, not only was listed as a double male protagonist with Andy Lau in the scene, but when the movie was promoted, the movie "Gambler" also focused its publicity on Chow Sing Chi's nonsense drama performance, and finally of course proved that this decision was correct, as long as there was a scene of Chow Xingchi and Wu Mengda in the movie, the audience would laugh and close their mouths.
In fact, this is not to blame Andy Lau, that year's golden combination of Stephen Chow and Wu Mengda almost overshadowed all the stars in the Hong Kong film industry, since then in the next few years, Chow Yun Fat and Jackie Chan are planning to go to Hollywood, and Leung Chao-wai has not yet found his own performance style, and Andy Lau's focus is still in the music scene, Hong Kong movies are ruled by the golden combination of Stephen Chow and Wu Mengda.