Zhang Yixing

Eric Wang

Yong Mei

Zhou Ye

Jin Chen

Darren Wang

Sunny Sun

Carmen Tong

Gilbert Lam Wai-San

Shu Meiling

Xinqi Deng

Sheren Tang Shui-Man

David Lam Wai

Sire Ma

Wu Jian

Song Yuhe

Li Donghai

Jim Liu

Jiang Rongrong

Shen Ao

Ning Hao

Tang Ning

Luyang Xu

Zhang Yifan

Wang Tianxing

He Wenqiang

Li Anran

Zhang Songwen

Randy Liu Ran

Fei Peng

Drama

Crime

孤注一掷

Tao Piao Piao

Beijing Shangshi Culture Communication Co., Ltd.

裕野（上海）文化传媒有限公司

China Film Group Corporation

沃栢嘉文化传播（上海）有限公司

Dirty Monkeys Studios

China

CinemaSerf

Were this not based on a true story, then I'd have thought you couldn't have made it up! A rather stroppy but brilliant programmer is passed over for promotion and so storms off in a huff. Like a great many clever men, "Pan Sheng" (Yixing Zhang) is a bit thick when it comes to the practical things in life and after a short plane journey finds himself attached to the lively and charismatic "Cai" (Sunny Sun) who is clearly too good to be true. A bus trip ensues and then "Pan" - and the other passengers - are promptly all but imprisoned working in a scam factory where betting odds are controlled and manipulated, where pretty girls are forced to host gaming tables and all essentially work to facilitate a complex fleecing operation that capitalises on the vulnerabilities of people at home who are successfully sucked into a fraud that nets the criminals millions of dollars and causes no end of collateral damage to those who find themselves addicted. "Pan" and former model, turned croupier, "Liang Anna" (Gina Chen Jin) try to concoct a way of escaping; of passing information to the outside summoning help - but their new guardians are savvy to just about every ploy they try. Interestingly, there is a glimmer of hope offered to all of them by their boss "Lu" (Chuan-jun Wang). He does allow them the prospect of buying their freedom - make enough money and off you go? Really? Hmmm. I did find the story fascinating - the use of some of the brightest minds to cleverly massage the data for an industry that is largely unregulated on a transnational basis is breathtaking. These guys basically print their own money as efficiently as if they had their own mint. Zhang does ok, even if he's a bit lightweight; it's Gina Jin who delivers the goods as an actor as the plot heads towards an admittedly rather unpredictable denoument. Sadly, there's far too much dialogue and the film drags it's feet all too often. A stronger, more effective, lead actor and half an hour less of preamble and waffle and Ao Shen could have given us a powerful indictment of human greed - on both sides of the computer screen. It's still watchable, though.