Many years and myriad movies ago, the man known as Hong Kong’s answer to Roger Corman made his directorial debut with Challenge of the Gamesters (1981). While Wong Jing has gone on to helm, produce, script and appear in a number of other types of film, his gambling movies – notably the God of Gamblers franchise that also introduced movie audiences to a Gambling Knight and Saint of Gamblers – may well have garnered him his biggest box office successes.

Wong Jing’s latest throw of the cinematic dice comes in the form of My Wife is a Gambling Maestro. It is a God of Gamblers rehash complete with a main character who likes sweet things – albeit lollipops rather than chocolate this time around – and who becomes an amnesiac for a time rather than being reduced to temporary idiocy. The movie stars the prolific filmmaker’s latest favourite female, buxom Natalie Meng Yao, as the young scion of a famous gambling family (and sister to Wong Jing’s Lung Ting Gan).

A martial arts expert – able to maim people with cards or sever a man’s finger with two of her own – and gambling maestro, the lively Lung Ying Ying is known in the gambling world as the Gorgeous Goddess of Gamblers. In contrast, Jay Chou (Nick Cheung) ­– the mild-mannered man she meets after losing her memory – having been left in debt by his gambler mother, tries to steer clear of any gambling activities. Hence it takes him some time to discover the true identity of the woman he initially mistook for a dolphin when he spied her lying on Shek O’s main beach.

After Jay takes the amnesiac Ying Ying back to his lodgings (she had been shot by her double-crossing fiancé and apparently drifted unconscious all the way from Macau to Shek O!), comedy – much of it violent but also some quite funny slapstick – and romance ensues. While focusing mainly on the growing relationship between the good-hearted pair, this part of the movie also features some hamming by others, notably character actor Cheung Tat Ming as Jay’s equally improbably named buddy, Eason Chan.

Given that My Wife is a Gambling Maestro is principally a gambling movie though, its story has to build up to a one-on-one gambling face-off between Ying Ying and the villain of the piece, the rabid Manchester United fan Manu (Danny Chan Kwok Kwan) whose ambition to become the Asian King of Gamblers and head of the undoubtedly super-lucrative Asian gambling industry is so strong that he is not above ordering the death of his strongest competitor.

Still, comedy abounds even in the climactic mah-jong scenes – with a sprinkling of priceless moments coming at the expense of Manu’s Man U obsession. That humour may be lost on those who are not football fans but really are a hoot for those who are.

And while the makers of My Wife is a Gambling Maestro don’t take their movie seriously, that doesn’t mean it’s a dead loss. Indeed, its irreverence – at one point in the film, Jay throws several DVDs of previous works by Wong Jing into the trash – and playful tendencies, along with cameo appearances by more than one familiar face, may well be its saving grace.

Yvonne Teh