Ultimately, Animal World’s ability to successfully pull off such a gaudily fun movie will win favour particularly with fans of video games and Asian cinema.
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Animal World is a fascinating movie. There is good reason why this psychedelic fantasy drama opened the Shanghai Film Festival this year. For starters, in true Asian fashion, this is a gambling movie. But Animal World is palpably unlike other traditional gambling films evocative of Asian cinema, drawing instead upon influences such as virtual reality video games. In this sense, Animal World is more Ready Player One than God of Gamblers.
The show begins with Zheng Kaisi (Li Yifeng), an aimless clown entertainer at a gaming arcade, which quickly reveals itself as an escapist fantasy dreamed up by Zheng, who in real life is a broke teenager troubled over his comatose mother. Zheng also nurses a crush on nurse Qing (Zhou Dongu), who lends Zheng the money necessary to keep his mother warded in the hospital.
This fairly innocuous if downbeat affair soon escalates when Zheng’s childhood friend Li Jun (Cao Bingkun) offers a deal to fix Zheng’s debts. All the subterfuge eventually leads to a head honcho character played by Michael Douglas, who convinces Zheng to participate in a game. This is where the fun begins. Taking place on an ancient ship, Zheng is required to pit his wits against similarly desperate contestants in games of deceit and double-crossed lies. Zheng, who initially fails to grasp the tactics and deception at hand, rises to the occasion by forging alliances and double/triple-crossing contestants.
Director Han Yan pulls off the campy plot and scenes with aplomb. Whilst Animal World is a Chinese film adapted from a Japanese manga by Nobuyuki Fukumoto (with two prior versions in 2009 film Kaiji: The Ultimate Gambler and a sequel in 2011), Han brings a Chinese sensibility to the proceedings. The movie does not feel like a repeat adaptation, and the 132-minute runtime passes quickly. Ultimately, Animal World’s ability to successfully pull off such a gaudily fun movie will win favour particularly with fans of video games and Asian cinema.
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