By Edmund Lee
Copyright scmp
2.5/5 stars
The intense, jargon-filled world of professional esports might seem like a rather esoteric setting for a film. Yet in the new comedy-drama Good Game, this competitive backdrop is used for something unexpectedly heartwarming: a simple underdog story about chasing dreams and overcoming obstacles.
Hong Kong director Dickson Leung Kwok-fai’s follow-up to his goofy fantasy comedy Yum Investigation is defined less by its geeky premise than its undemanding nature and unabashedly life-affirming spirit – and is far more interested in the heart of its players than in winning at a video game.
Will Or Wai-lam (One More Chance), who shocked the industry in July with the announcement that he is fighting stage-four lung cancer, stars as Bond, an elite player who, owing to his difficult personality and advancing age – he is almost 30 – is being dropped by his sponsors for a younger rival, Vava (Jessica Chan Yee-chun).
While Sing (Ng Siu-hin), his former teammate and only friend, swiftly moves on to a conventional job, Bond struggles to give up on his own ambitions in the arena, which are often personified by random sightings of his in-game avatar, Solo (Anson Chan Ngai-san).
Salvation abruptly arrives in the form of Tightie (Andrew Lam Man-chung, indulging in his own brand of nonsensical humour), the middle-aged proprietor of a failing internet cafe. In true fairy-tale fashion, Tightie recruits the dejected Bond to lead a ragtag team in an esports tournament with a major cash prize.
They are soon joined by two other amateurs to form the requisite crew of four: Fay (Yanny Chan Wing-yan), Tightie’s aimless daughter from a broken marriage; and Octo (martial arts film legend Lo Mang), an elderly novice who starts gaming to cheer up his dementia-stricken wife (Alice Fung So-bor).
How this cross-generational quartet could ever believe they stand a chance is a question the film does not bother to answer. Instead of telling a credible story, Leung peppers it with inane life lessons; in a scene that confuses gaming tactics with moral failure, Bond is even condemned as selfish for making a strategic in-game sacrifice.
While the decision to shoot the gameplay scenes in live action is a refreshing way to convey the virtual experience, Good Game is otherwise too conceptually lightweight and artificially inspirational in its telling of the players’ personal stories, often leaning on sentimentality over substance.
This disconnect is just as apparent in the handling of their avatars, also played by Ken Law Ho-ming, Amy Lo Wai-man and Chloe So Ho-yee. Despite some interesting action, they never feel organically linked to the protagonists, instead merely existing in what comes across as a separate, low-budget fantasy thriller without a plot.
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