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One More Chance movie review: Chow Yun-fat is no God of Gamblers in old-fashioned human drama that may or may not be inspired by Bruce Lee’s teaching | South China Morning Post
Review | One More Chance movie review: Chow Yun-fat is no God of Gamblers in old-fashioned human drama that may or may not be inspired by Bruce Lee’s teaching
Chow Yun-fat plays a down-on-his-luck gambler who finds out he has a son with a former girlfriend. Cue predictable father-son bonding and a teary third act
One More Chance was filmed in 2019 with a Bruce Lee-related title. Some Lee references remain but are inexplicable, the nuances lost to edits and changes
Admirers of Chow Yun-fat’s humorous performances in 1980s hits such as An Autumn’s Tale and All About Ah-Long are in for a surprise treat with One More Chance, an unabashedly old-fashioned melodrama that lives or dies with the audience’s goodwill for the Hong Kong cinema legend.
Taking a major step away from the sombre personas of the characters he played in his two most recent films – the crime thrillers Cold War 2 (2016) and Project Gutenberg (2018) – Chow rolls back the years, summoning all his playfulness to portray a pathological gambler on the path to self-discovery and redemption.
Chow is Water, a middle-aged loser who fled his Hong Kong debtors for Macau a long time ago. Needless to say, his new home city has hardly proved the best place for a gambling addict; Water struggles to repay his casino debts despite running a hair salon with his two buddies, Flower (Liu Kai-chi) and Fat Dog (Michael Ning).
Water’s outlook changes when former girlfriend Lee Xi (Anita Yuen Wing-yee) shows up with a bag of money, a son he never knew he had and an offer: if Water can take care of the autistic young adult, Yeung (Will Or Wai-lam, Drifting), for a month, Lee will pay him more.
What follows is a sporadically touching and thoroughly predictable story of father-son bonding, where the pair gradually – and unconvincingly – warm to each other despite the challenging conditions they face.
Anita Yuen as Lee Xi in a still from “One More Chance”.
The film settles for a tear-jerking third act that drags on for so long, it almost feels oddly lyrical by the time Chow and Or’s characters end up in a desert for the final scene.
Marking the solo directing debut of veteran cinematographer Anthony Pun Yiu-ming – who co-directed 2017’s Extraordinary Mission with Alan Mak Siu-fai – One More Chance is a rare attempt at a heart-warming drama not just for Chow but also writer Felix Chong Man-keung, who directed him in Project Gutenberg.
One More Chance’s bland efforts to evoke nostalgic sentiment in its audience, coming from a conscientious storyteller like Chong, are a slight disappointment. But could this be just a compromised version of his vision?
Will Or (left) as Yeung and Chow Yun-fat as Water in a still from “One More Chance”.
Saddled with an awkward Chinese title that translates as Don’t Call Me God of Gamblers in a reference to Chow’s role in the God of Gamblers movie series, the film was shot in 2019 and originally named Be Water, My Friend in English – presumably before the famous saying by Bruce Lee was adopted as a clarion call during the 2019 anti-government protests in Hong Kong.
We still see glimpses of Lee connections in One More Chance: Chow’s character is named Water in the subtitles and, somewhat inexplicably, he is even shown worshipping Lee at home in the way one would a deity. But any nuanced wisdom surrounding this setting is presumed lost amid the tides of the times.
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