Based on the Southeast Asia fraud factory incidents in 2021, No More Bets is a solid tense Chinese crime thriller that presents the world of online scams in an eye-opening fashion, delivering unnerving suspense and shock with hard-hitting truth.

Through a promising overseas job offer, computer programmer Pan Sheng and model Anna Liang are lured into a fraud factory, trapped permanently in a slave labor camp where they are forced to commit cyber fraud in an online gambling scam. As the criminal network expands, Pan and Anna conspire to contact the police...

Director Shen Ao balances the multiple storylines well and maintains tight pacing, taking the audience through the logistical pipeline of a scam from beginning to end. The narrative kaleidoscopically presents the phone scam from different perspectives, ranging from the crime boss running the fraud factory, the computer programmer coding the scam app, the model fronting the gambling matches to the unfortunate victim taking the bait.

What draws the audience to No More Bets is knowing that this all happened in reality. It was shocking to think about how as technology develops, crime networks naturally become sophisticated and better organized too. The film incorporates the factual to its advantage, finding a style between documentary and fiction, like a dramatic film that's completely composed of the re-enactment scenes out of a true crime documentary.

There's been an exploding trend of crime films from Mainland China, with the immediate emergence of subgenres this year, like pulp crime with Lost in the Stars, crime procedurals like Dust to Dust, and neo-noir with Zhang Yimou's Under the Light. Government regulations seem to have opened up, allowing the depiction of gangsters and crime as long as public service announcements are tagged before the credits, specifically, title cards detailing every perpetrator's prison sentence and a public message discouraging committing said crime.

Come to think of it, Hollywood had a similar phrase with the Hayes Act from 1930 to the 1960s with its set of do's and don'ts in cinema. I hope this is a step towards more possibilities for Chinese cinema, opening up more fresh stories in new genres being told.

Heard about this movie from Reddit, Where it said that this movie made them hate the two people I've mentioned it in the title.

It is an eye-opener for the human trafficking side of things. The movie's antagonists force, the people to work for them, a.k.a. Trafficking. Somehow, they get people hooked on the job first via an email and tell them that they will be working overseas. However, these people do not know that they will be in it for the long haul. They do not know that they have already said yes to being these antagonist' way of making money and at the same time their beating bags if they do not comply.

This film also gives us a side of China, in they really spend a lot of money just so they can help the people who are already addicted and so that they can stop the operations. I think this is very wonderful, especially if this is really what's happening? Also, this gives us another point of view us. It also gives us not only the human tracking victims part but also, the other victims, and they are those have become addicted and made use.

Apart from that, this also confirms what one of the Philippine Congresswomen were talking about during a POGO hearing, and this was that they choose a country, they choose a suburban place to live and to operate, and then, of course they already have their investors ready, and so on (basically, what was shown in the film). Oh It's not part of the film, but it also opens a side for me at least. This is how these Chinese spies are recruited, of course they have already outstanding warrants in China, that is why they need someone's help from their From their government to erase that crime. And that is how the recent Al Jazeera documentary about the Chinese spy in Thailand somehow gives us and somehow I think this movie adds credibility to that.

This film really made me realize how lenient the Philippine government really is. As they were able to raid Onlin gaming Operatives because someone had already tipped them off and most of the time these are the people who had already escaped twice. And I do remember an Interview with a PAOC officer Who tells us that the people who already escape came to the police first and imagine, some of the people were working in a raided POGO hub would also be found in another one. Like come on!