Expecting nothing expecting more than a thriller/action movie, I was pleasantly surprised by "No More Bets". The movie takes its subject matter (scams around online gambling) seriously and describes rather precisely the mechanisms that undergird these operations. Narratively the film is original since it follows three different characters and does not really feature a protagonist or "hero". It focuses on victims - how they fall for scams, how they are led to addiction and eventual misery - but also the scammers and how they run their operation. Said scammers are actually depicted in a rather nuanced way (as the film goes on anyway), with kidnapped individuals who tend to become willing accomplices (or do they?), and willing accomplices who might not be entirely evil. The boss is an interesting character, who one second tries to rape one of his victims and the next is a smiling daddy who cheerfully introduces his daughter to that very same victim. Cold.
The film has its flaws though: its focus on victims sometimes veers toward graceless melodrama, although that can be compensated somewhat by other scenes. I'm thinking mostly of the alternate montage that shows the eventual demise of a victim and the scammers wildly celebrating the millions they just made. Ouch.
Finally, while the ending is unabashedly didactic, the pro-Chine police propaganda is as heavy handed as in Zhang Yimou's "Under the Light". The end result is that while most of the story sounds frighteningly real, the last part comes across mostly as fake.
Still, on the whole this is one of the most interesting commercial films to be released this year in China.
The film has its flaws though: its focus on victims sometimes veers toward graceless melodrama, although that can be compensated somewhat by other scenes. I'm thinking mostly of the alternate montage that shows the eventual demise of a victim and the scammers wildly celebrating the millions they just made. Ouch.
Finally, while the ending is unabashedly didactic, the pro-Chine police propaganda is as heavy handed as in Zhang Yimou's "Under the Light". The end result is that while most of the story sounds frighteningly real, the last part comes across mostly as fake.
Still, on the whole this is one of the most interesting commercial films to be released this year in China.