Action, intrigue, sleight of hand, comical blundering, the pocketing of a few (million) patacas … all this and more is yours in the Vegas-on-Sea you see on screens large and small.
How much of it is fantasy, wishful thinking or a version of the truth is for the viewer to decide: after all, the illusory quality of the mirage that is Macau has always been potential television and movie gold.
Modern “gold” is the subject of television series The Thunder (2019; available on iQiyi). Shot partly in Macau, the 48-part saga, starring Hong Kong’s Simon Yam Tat-wah, is a drugs-war thriller pitting frontline police officers against treacherous superiors on the take, as well as the regulation criminals.
A more sedate entry to the former enclave features in the Pierce Brosnan miniseries Around the World in 80 Days (1989), which is most easily summoned on YouTube. The Emmy-nominated adaptation, also starring Monty Python’s Eric Idle, can be found courtesy of “obscurefilms89” – a pure Spinal Tap, where-are-they-now reference if ever there were one.
The series takes some liberties with Jules Verne’s novel, but does show Macau (and Hong Kong) in no little Victorian splendour: colonnaded buildings, junks with battened sails, palanquins and luxuriant offshore islands. All of which, along with the clichéd coolies, godowns, trotting rickshaw runners and inscrutable Chinamen might be considered blithe colonial shorthand for “the exotic East”.
Maintaining the James Bond connection is The Man with the Golden Gun (1974; Amazon Prime), in which Bond (Roger Moore) turns up in Macau on the trail of dodgy character Lazar, supplier of hitman Scaramanga’s gold bullets.
Mining Macau’s sinister screen reputation further, the Bond brigade was back for Skyfall (2012; Amazon Prime, Google Play).
The resplendent, floating Golden Dragon Casino, where Bond accounts for numerous local heavies, almost upstages Daniel Craig. And although that, unfortunately, was but a set, it was also a reference to the 1974 movie’s real Macau Palace floating casino – now being refurbished.
Spoof Bond, too, has turned to China’s playground, especially its casinos, for inspiration. In Johnny English Reborn (2011; Netflix), Rowan Atkinson’s bumbling British agent finds himself on a mission to save the Chinese premier, a task requiring a visit to the Grand Lisboa, where the smart money is on some staggering English ineptitude.
Also enjoying their 15 minutes of movie fame, this time in Now You See Me 2 (2016; Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, YouTube), are the likes of The Venetian Macao and Sands Macao, among other locations, which secure prominent supporting-act status to the dazzling wizardry of magicians the Four Horsemen and their ringleader, Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo).
The film’s extended Macau sequence (actually almost an hour) calls in at “the world’s oldest magic store”, which was inspired by Iong’s Magic Shop, now to be found near the Ruins of St Paul’s.
The film’s re-creation is staffed by Taiwan’s “King of Mandopop” Jay Chou and Tsai Chin: a Bond girl in You Only Live Twice (1967) and a Bond returnee, 39 years later, in Casino Royale. Tsai, incidentally, has now been recognised as the first Chinese Bond girl.
Keeping a well-shod foot in the television camp, The Venetian was also on hand to frame deep and meaningful shots in 2009 Korean romantic teenage drama Boys Over Flowers (Netflix).
Starring Koo Hye-sun and Kim Hyun-joong and arriving in the vanguard of the Korean wave, the 25-part series – all class division, coming-of-age angst and relationship vicissitudes – is still considered a benchmark in the evolution of the K-drama.
Maybe that’s the secret behind the illusion: Macau can magically become all manner of screen personae, whatever the production.