3/5 stars
Chinese filmmaker Han Yan has made an admirably earnest adaptation of Nobuyuki Fukumotos manga and anime series Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji, with its profoundly silly premise. The director once again shows his aptitude for inserting wildly incongruent fantasy sequences into a story, having earlier put a couple of zombie attacks into the romcom Go Away Mr. Tumour (2015).
The fantasy action scenes in Animal World arrive in the shape of the monster-slaying daydreams of young man Zheng Kaisi (Li Yifeng), whose periodic escapes into his violent, cartoon-inspired subconscious may well stem from a traumatic episode from his childhood more on that in the deliberately flagged sequel.
Stuck in a low-end job at a…
Read the full article at: https://www.scmp.com/culture/film-tv/article/2154661/animal-world-film-review-li-yifeng-michael-douglas-chinese-gambling