Do san 3: Siu nin do san

God of Gamblers series (Stephen Chow not included) are always fascinating, but this prequel? I must admit the idea, tricks, strategy used by the characters here constitute good plot but the characters couldn't portray the original ones. Jordan Chan is certainly no Siang Hua Chiang. The character Lung Wu should not be in this film because he never met Koo Chun until he was recommended by the Japanese boss in GOG 1. Leon Lai doesn't have Chow Yun Fat's charm and the idea of why Koo Chun applies wet-and-set hairstyle is ridiculous. Anita Yuen doesn't have any similar face pattern to Cheung Min. However, as long as you don't know GOG, this is quite entertaining.

This movie has got it all .. gambling, kung fu, even chocolate! This movie takes place years before the original God of Gamblers movie. Ko Chun (Leon Lai) tells the process of his winning of the title God Of Gamblers at the first God of Gamblers Tournament. It includes Chow Yun-fat and Stephen Chiau. Lots of kung fu action ... tons of gambling and this prequel answers all the questions you always wanted to ask. Why the ring on the little finger? Why the bitter chocolate? Why the gel in the hair?

it's always nice to wrap up a Good movie as a trilogy, adding the third sequel, in this case a prequel to the first movie. however, as this is considered the "early stage" of god of gamblers, it's flawed with contradicting things, such as Ko Chun and Dragon meeting one another, which they did not do until the japanese gambler in God of Gamblers I assigned Dragon as a body guard to Ko Chun. moreover, the characters depicting the original characters in GOG does not quite meet up to the requirement, Jordan Chan being Dragon, does indeed do some good action scenes but his physical appearance is too small to be Dragon, while as Leon Lai does not have the same charisma as Chow Yun Fat depicts in the 2 original GOGs.

finally, the plot of GOG3 explains how Ko Chun came to like chocolate and why he has faded back hair. i personally think they needed to be revised they didn't quite make sense.

all in all, putting aside the above notion, the movie has the same slick twist at the end leaving you in suspsense and then a fair explanation as of how the result came to be as it came. and action scenes were very well too, if not better than the original GOG's which used more gun vs gun battle, here Dragon usually starts off barehanded and ends up with a gun from his enemies hands.

try to put aside the original GOG's and watch this as a separate movie, it did try its best to tie the movie to the original one's , but i guess they tried too hard and they tried to ignore the fact that Ko Chun and Dragon never met until GOG1.