MAHJONG HEROES is a slow-moving comedy drama from the Shaw Brothers studio, written by Wong Jing and starring Yueh Hua. Those two presences are the only items of interest here. The story is based around a mahjong tournament, with various rival characters competing for dominance, but the actual gameplay itself isn't translated to the screen very well and it's never suspenseful, funny, or exciting. Hua is wasted in a non-dynamic role and the story takes too long building up characters who simply aren't very funny or, indeed, interesting. There's one or two humorous moments (including a bit with a popular cross-eyed Shaw actor) but overall this one's a drag.
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Leofwine_draca24 August 2018
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morrison-dylan-fan22 August 2021With time close to running out for a large number of Hong Kong flicks to leave Netflix UK, I searched frantically to decide which would be the final in my quartet of viewings. Discovering this to be a rather obscure title from the Shaw Bros, I got set for a round of Mahjong.
View on the film:
Laying out the rules of the game, director Pei-Chuan Li closely works with cinematographer Kuo-Hua Ku to draw a winning hand of a ultra-stylised high stakes atmosphere that even folds those unfamiliar with mahjong into taking a gamble, via excellent push-in shots that look under the table to view the hand of the player, which is carefully framed so that the psychological mind-game each player is doing can be seen at the same time.
Whilst the films he directed had an eye on the gross-out punch-line, the screenplay by Jing Wong finds humor via a fantastic use of narration to capture the internal monologues of the players which turn between edge of the cliff fear and stuck up arrogance,as the heroes of mahjong win the match.