From Riches To Rags

In one of John Woo's best-loved comedies, deadpan Ricky Hui is a working stiff who wins big at the races, only to be told by a doctor that he is terminally ill. Unable to cope with his illness, he hires an assassin to kill him, and then finds out that the doctor was mistaken. With no way to call off the killer, Hui goes on a mad run for his life, culminating in a showdown with the assassin at a mental asylum. Like many of Woo's comedies, From Riches to Ragsis dark and almost surreal; and, in a foreshadowing of Woo's Bullet in the Head, the movie appropriates the Russian roulette sequence from The Deer Hunter.