Caught off guard, a generation of gambling king Ho Hung Sun died. At this point, a generation of legends has passed away, and there is no gambling king in the world.
Speaking of He Hongshen, there are too many stories to tell: self-made to create 500 billion yuan of earth-shattering wealth, rapid expansion in the business field for decades without falling, four wives competing for each other's power and pet gossip, and now the children are eyeing the inheritance of family property... Even his experience has spawned and prospered a unique genre of Hong Kong cinema – gambling films.
In that incomparably brilliant era of gambling films, the gods of gambling, gamblers, gamblers, gamblers and other characters joined forces to create the entire "gambling film universe", setting off a huge wave, attracting the audience to be fascinated. Today, the fourth brother will take everyone to review the gambling film storm.
Hailed as the first gambling film in the history of Hong Kong cinema, the Sha clan, the protagonist of the 1976 film "The Great Deception of the Gambler King", was portrayed as a hereditary martial arts faction, who practiced gambling and thousands of tricks in order to fight against the unjust regime, and the rich and the poor were a typical bridge section of martial arts films. "The Great Deception of the Gambler King" can be called a modern martial arts movie, but the background has changed from martial arts to the gambling world and the old world.
The climax of the movie is the gambling between the protagonist Sha Tong and the enemy Peng Tianshi, and the two have a straight duel in suits. Playing psychological warfare → chips all-on (stud) → increase the bet (gambling outside the table, wealth and even life) → traitors steal cards→ the protagonist will see through the plan to → the bad guys lose→ use black to eat black to clean up the bad guys and traitors. It is not difficult to find that almost all the bridge sections of later gambling films are inseparable from this vein, which shows the classic and importance of this film.
From 1980 to around 1981, "The King of a Thousand Kings" and "The Heroes of a Thousand Kings" written by Wang Jing and supervised by his father Wang Tianlin came out, Xie Xian, Wang Mingquan, Yang Qun, Ren Dahua, Zhou Runfa and other big coffee gathered, family grudges, life and death of the giants, love and hate, for a time the storm, everyone talked about gambling.
Later, Wang Jing wrote and directed "A Thousand Kings Fighting Thousand Masters" and "Supreme Supreme", the latter after the release, won 23.29 million Hong Kong dollars, ranking 5th in the annual box office list, it can be said that without the box office sales of these two films, there would be no birth of "God of Gamblers".
In 1989, Wang Jing, with her amazing box office appeal, gathered Chow Yun Fat and Andy Lau, who were in the sky at that time, as well as influential movie stars such as Zhang Min, Wang Zuxian, Wu Mengda, etc., to create the movie "God of Gamblers".
As a result, it has inadvertently achieved the peak of Hong Kong gambling films.
The man with his back, wearing a suit and chewing chocolate has become an eternal classic in the hearts of the audience, accompanied by Lu Guanting's classic BGM, a smiling and insightful brother, making any opponent at the table like a great enemy.
To this day, I can recall how Chow Yun Fat talked and laughed at the poker table, and his status was like Lin Zhengying in zombie films, Stephen Chow in comedies, and Jackie Chan in kung fu films, representing an era of Hong Kong cinema.
However, after the release of "God of Gamblers", it received countless praises, but it was also questioned by many viewers.
The traditional casino smoke miasma, gamblers are also sinister and cunning, the casino is not a battle of life and death, although it is not like the battlefield of the sword and light sword shadow, but the gambling people are killing people without blood, not a positive image.
On the surface, God of Gamblers is undoubtedly conveying a value of "getting shortcuts for nothing".
But the success of "God of Gamblers" lies in the fact that it does not evaluate the quality of gambling, but tells the story of a person who is still indomitable after encountering setbacks, giving this marginalized crowd a legend. Through one gamble after another, a heroic image of the god of gambling is conveyed to the audience. What he calls gambling is not for profit, but for the sake of justice.
This kind of gimmick of stealing beams and changing pillars not only satisfies the audience's curiosity about gambling films, but also triggers the audience's emotional resonance.
As a result, the popularity of "God of Gamblers" opened a brilliant era of Hong Kong gambling films, attracting countless filmmakers to join the gambling sea and shooting a large number of similar works. Almost every red star has a gambling film: gambling Saint Zhou Xingchi, gambler Andy Lau, gambling Zun Wan Ziliang, gambling bully Mei Yanfang, gambling zheng Yuling and so on emerge in an endless stream, many gambling films are born one after another, and jointly create a film universe of Hong Kong films.
In 1990, directed by Liu Zhenwei and starring Stephen Chow, the nonsense comedy "Gamble Saint" was the earliest follow-up work. With the help of the qigong fever that Chinese mainland at that time, the thousand techniques of the divine skill were turned into special functions. The film blatantly takes pleasure in parody, and Xingye imitates Zhou Runfa's god of gamblers style with exaggerated and funny, full of jokes.
Wang Jing did not want to show weakness after watching "Gamble Saint", immediately copied back, pulled Zhou Xingchi and Andy Lau partnered, and directed "Gambler".
In 1991, "Gamblers 2 Above the Beach Gambler" invited Gong Li to star, allowing the gambler Zhou Xingchi to travel back to Shanghai in the 1930s and fight Yoshiko Kawashima with special functions. Chaos, vulgarity, violence, plagiarism, everything is used to the extreme.
Wang Jing's gambling film series represents another side of the golden age of Hong Kong cinema in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He bet on the grassroots market in the city, concocted entertainment FMCG products to suit his wishes, and created a gambling world that was divorced from reality, had no taboos, was timely and happy, and was alive and exciting. The gambling film captured the rapid development of Hong Kong's economy at that time, the mentality of hot money everywhere, impetuous people's hearts, and wanting to get rich overnight, so it was greatly praised.
In 1992, influenced by the trend of Hong Kong gangster films set off by "Lame Hao", Wang Jing took the life experience of the gambling king Ho Hung Sun as the prototype and filmed "The Legend of the New Brother of the Casino Tycoon" and "The Supreme Invincible of the Casino Tycoon 2", but the film is about the legendary life of the gambling king, which belongs to the joke-type biographical film and cannot be counted in the gambling universe.
In 1994, Zhou Runfa returned and sat in "God of Gamblers 2", and the plot was still old-fashioned.
Subsequently, Wang Jing found Ge Minhui and Li Ming to star in "Gambling Saint 2 Street Gambling Saint" (1995) and "God of Gamblers 2: The Young God of Gamblers" (1997), which did not cause much repercussions.
In the later "Gambler vs. Las Vegas", "Gambler Saint 3 Nameless Boy", "Chinese Gambler", "Gambler 2002", "The Gambler's Man Will Win the Heavens" and "The King of a Thousand Kings 2000", Wang Jing wanted to build Zhang Jiahui into a new generation of "gambling stars", but at that time, the joy of the slag slag Hui was very small, and often could only be used as a foil, and there was no ability to pick the beam.
Despite many failures, Wang Jing still does not plan to give up the gambling film. Films such as "Que Sheng" in 2005, "Que Sheng 2 Touching The Queen of Heaven", and 2008's "My Wife Gamble Saint" changed the cards to mahjong, or used women as the protagonists, and the standard is still the same.
In 2014, Wang Jing, who has been dormant in this field for many years, successfully encouraged the gambling god Zhou Runfa to return to his position, plus the addition of many superstars, including Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, Nicholas Tse, Liu Jialing, etc., with the "Macau Storm" trilogy in the market to sell out, but at the same time, the reputation of gambling films completely plummeted, carrying the label of bad films. Let the gambling film become a residual memory.
Once upon a time, Hong Kong gambling films were all the rage and once became the most popular film and television genre after Shaw's martial arts films. After nearly half a century of development, gambling films have interpreted human feelings and morality on this small gambling table. Today, in this era when everyone can say that "Hong Kong films are dead", these films have written the most wonderful strokes in the history of Hong Kong films, and the images left behind will never fade.
Also like the death of the gambling king Ho Hung-sun, such a legendary life, the written period has been completed, enough for future generations to miss infinitely, and become the green years remembered by the diehards of Hong Kong films.