KEEP HAMMERING AWAY, AND YOU’LL EVENTUALLY SUCCEED. That appears to be the message of “The Odd One Dies,” a 1997 flick by Hong Kong director Johnnie To (aka “Patrick Yau”).

Aside from that uplifting moral, this movie has some really good things going for it: A dark sense of humor, camera moves and shaggy-dog characters reminiscent of Wong Kar-Wai. By the second half, however, “The Odd One Dies” degenerates into a routine romantic drama, wherein it’s clear to everyone except the two central protagonists that they’re perfect for each other.

The main character, a hapless loser, is played by Takeshi Kaneshiro. He played a cop who falls for Bridgette Lin in Kar-Wai’s “Chungking Express,” and a loner with a penchant for breaking into other people’s businesses in “Fallen Angels.” In “The Odd One Dies,” he’s a loner again, floating around the same kind of gritty Hong Kong underworld as in “Fallen Angels.” Given the choice of mise-en-scene--antiseptic neon light saturates everything--and the Godardian disjointed editing, it’s easy to imagine this movie as continuing the story of Kaneshiro’s “…Angels” character. There’s even a hint that Johnnie To embraced comparisons to Kar-Wai, since “The Odd One Dies” has a musical refrain that--surprise!--was also a refrain in “The Days of Being Wild.”

Anyway, the loser gets a hit man assignment from some mob guys. The assignment is dangerous, the odds that he’ll get killed not exactly in his favor. So he takes the money down to the local casino to play blackjack until he either loses it all or beats the house. For the first half-dozen hands, he loses, which doesn’t seem like a surprise since the man ALWAYS loses. But Kaneshiro won’t give up, even when the dealer takes pity on him and advises him to stop playing. He keeps going at it, throwing down increasingly larger wads of cash… and then his luck changes.

The former loser wins a hand. Then he wins another, and another, and another, until he’s made back all the money he’s lost, as well as a huge pile of the house’s money. And the guy can’t believe it. Of course, now that he’s hit the jackpot, he decides that risking his neck on a suicidal hit doesn’t sound like a good idea anymore. So he hires another hit man to take his place. The hit man, however, turns out to be a mysterious woman, not to mention a professional assassin.

Now, that sounds like a potentially good premise, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the mysterious woman/professional assassin is soon revealed to be something far more ordinary. The same can be said for the screenplay. “The Odd One Dies” features a love story that has been done better in a hundred other movies, although there is a dual makeover scene that Ernest Lubistch should be kicking himself for not putting into “The Shop Around the Corner.”

Some people might like this movie. I don’t really recommend it, though. But I admit, it’s impossible for me to fully disapprove of a flick that hinges an important plot point around cannibalism. I’m serious.

The loser is auditioning for the coveted hit man job, and the mob guys all seem to think he’d be a good fit, except this one head goodfella who refuses to accept him. Enraged, Kaneshiro grabs a knife, and in a sequence that’s actually quite comedic, cuts off all the fingers on the head mobster’s hand (My analysis: It’s funny because To wisely pans backward when the mobster’s fingers go flying into the air, literally distancing the audience from the violence.)

In the chaos that ensues, the mobsters throw the finger-severing loser to the ground, while hustling about to find their boss’ severed fingers. And they’re trying to find ice for the fingers, too, but since they’re meeting in a secret drug den, the refrigerators are full of crack, and there’s not a single cube of ice anywhere. They manage to gather one, two, three, four of the severed fingers, but the fifth is still missing. One of the senior mob guys has a light bulb go off over his head, and he slowly turns to Kaneshiro, who appears to be holding something in his mouth, and is threatening to swallow it.

That’s how he gets the job. I guess that’s the other moral of the movie: Make bold moves, because they may pay off. So, the next time you want a raise at work, march into your boss’ office, slice off all the fingers on his hand, then threaten to eat one of them unless he ponies up the dough. Or work harder. I guess you can try that, too.