Conman in Vegas
Wong Jing and Andy Lau return in the sequel to
their film Conman. Its recipe is similar to the first one – part comedy,
part gambling, part action and part con – though the focus is much more
on the comedy this time around. And as in any good Wong Jing film, it is
inundated with a bevy of curvaceous and seductive women. For the most part
this is an enjoyable and very silly film that is as light as air and about
as filling. In the last third it begins to run out of gas and ideas and
one gets the feeling that Wong Jing is frantically looking for filler –
primarily consisting of poisonous snakes biting bottoms – to make it to
the ninety-minute mark.
At the end of the previous film, Lau had ended
up with Athena Chu – but they quickly jettison her with a “she dumped you
because you’re too old for her” comment from his friend Nick Cheung. Great
– that had been my favorite part about that film – that an old geezer like
Andy could end up with Athena ! At least its more humane than the
way Austin Powers gets rid of Elizabeth Hurley in his sequel – Athena is
no fembot.
The pair of Lau and Cheung has added a third
party to their gambling/con man team. This is Natalis Chan and his presence
in a film always guarantees a fair share of idiotic female cleavage comedy
and they certainly come through in this regard. In their first con,
the three of them take a triad boss for a load of money and they are later
happily carousing around a pool with more bikini clad females than you
will see in a Miss Universe contest when the boss comes after them.
Natalis and Lau escape, but Cheung is captured
and the boss demands HK$30mm as ransom or Cheung will start losing his
body parts. At the same time, the authorities from the Mainland come to
Lau with a proposition that he help them recover both the money and the
guy who cheated them out of billions of dollars. The catch is the fellow
is living in Las Vegas. So off they go to Vegas to try and scam him out
of his money and put him on a plane back to China. Much of the film was
apparently shot in Caesar's Palace.
They end up getting the assistance of an adult
film director – Wong Jing playing the same character he did in the first
film – and two seemingly bubble headed girls from Taiwan who are looking
for a rich catch. They all work together in trying to bring the bad
guy down. I can’t say any of their schemes were particularly clever, but
often amusing.
Wong Jing in his never-ending attempt to discover
his new “Chingmy Yau” introduces three lovely actresses in the film. The
two gold diggers from Taiwan are Yuk Fong with the vast cleavage and Kelly
Lam who can unthread a man’s shirt buttons with her teeth. Nice work,
but I would actually prefer a woman that could sew a button on with her
teeth! Both are nice on the eyes, but Chingmy Yau they are not. Chingmy
could have added about 20 degrees of heat and many more laughs to a few
of those scenes.
The woman I was most impressed by was Lei Fei
who plays the girlfriend of the bad guy. She has one scene in which she
displays some very nice acrobatic moves and she has the looks and a sneer
that makes her a candidate for some “girls with guns” roles. I am always
on the lookout for some new female stars that could kick start that genre
again.
Don’t expect a lot, but there are a number of
small very humorous moments that keeps the film afloat and makes it a quick
mindless 90-minutes.
NB - Above pictures primarily taken from
either Sanneys site or
the China Star site.