"Wise Guys Never Die" has nothing original at all. Wong Jing is known for copying ideas from other movies, but he gets away with it as he can pass it along as "parodies" in his comedies. Unfortunately, "Wise Guys Never Die" doesn't seem to be a parody at all, in fact, it seems that he is serious and thinks he can pull off a smart drama about swindling. Unfortunately, it falls flat.
"Wise Guys Never Die" is about an accountant (Nicky Cheung) who gets nailed for corruption charges and stealing from his company. He gets sentenced to jail, where he meets and learns from an old swindler (Wong Jing) and they end up becoming partners and plot to swindle people when they get released.
It's true that most movies end up copying from one another, or borrowing ideas from each other, and I'm fine with that. But my biggest gripe with "Wise Guys Never Die" is that the entire plot was REVEALED to me halfway through the movie, by using a very elementary type of foreshadowing. It's almost as if Wong Jing treats his audience as little children, and tries to guide us like guiding blind folk. The final shot of the movie is especially pathetic and unnecessary (not the scene, but the camera shot).
I won't reveal anything in this review, but anyone with half a brain can figure out how this movie would end. The gambling scenes were boring as well, the subplots were useless and especially Nick's wife, whose an interesting character but severely underused in a plot that pretty much had nothing to do with the story at all. Sorry Wong Jing, you should stick to what you do best, and that is parody comedies in the style of SNL and MadTV. You are NOT Tarantino, Bruckheimer, Scorsese, or Lynch, and you will never be. This is not to knock Wong Jing, but simply because he's toying with a genre that is clearly not his niche.
