Archibald | 3.5 | A film as stupid as funny |
jeffy | 3.5 |
The Sting 2 is the kind of nonsense that Wong Jing masters : two of his favorite actors, a screenplay which obviously pump the trends of that time, heavy comic and enjoyable action.
Mandy (Andy Lau Tak-Wah) is a talented conman who however will one day con the wrong guy, a millionaire willing (bad enough to break a few legs...) to hire him for a special mission : infiltrate the prison where he had his father in law incarcerated by framing him of the murder of his own daughter (the bad guy's wife...you follow ?) in order to subtly draw him off the location of the rest of his money. But in the prison, the superintendant (Tony Leung Ka-Fai) happens to be one of Mandy the conman's victim.
The movie begins with a scene where Andy Lau shows that he know how to handle playing cards (it is true that he's used to gambling movies) followed by a regular poker game (is it necesqary to remind that Wong Jing invented this genre in HK ?) which ends up in an impressive car chasing/stunts. Mixing gambling, punchy action (a few fights quite nice) and jail movie with all the usual faces of the Stanley prison (see Prison On Fire and others) is pretty clever and the result is rather good. Humour if of course real fat, stupid and often under the belt (farts, sex, etc...) but if you're not scared by the absurdity of cantonese humour, the films makes you raise a smile or two and even tickles tour zygomatics a fex times.
Andy Lau is comfortable but doesn't go as far (his role keeps him from it anyway) as his stooge Tony Leung who never step back before any grimace, any degrading postures...he goes for it, he believes in it...and so do we. When I see this kind of films while thinking to the image he has here in western countries (mainly because of The Lover), the gap is amusing.
In Brief, without bieng a must see, The Sting 2 should be watched by amateur of this kind of humour, alone or with a bunch of friends to spend a good time. Thanks to a pair of actors very efficient and to a scenario totally crazy but far less "heavy" than other Wong Jings, this film worth to be classified as one of the funniest nonsense shot by these three nutcases.