Jin shouzhi

I watched Infernal Affairs when it first hit these shores, and really was engrossed in what was an incredible tour de force of a movie. This film reunites the two leads from that classic film in an attempt to reignite that spark, and personally I found it generally worked.

We have a reversal of roles, with Tony Leung playing the villain as againt Andy Lau playing the dedicated policeman. The storyline centres around the rise & fall of the a crooked developer during the growth & rise of Hong Kong through much of the 1970s onwards, all with the background of the story of Hong Kong behind it.

This film really does get so much correct, and matches Infernal Affairs in terms of acting, direction and pacing. I was engrossed in this film, and thoroughly enjoyed the storyline as we saw the ebbs & flows of the Tony Leung's crooked developer rise to the top, and all his amorality in everything he does. He plays everyone, not always winning, but comes out on top at the end. Andy Lau plays the cop dedicated over the decades and failing to bring down the crooks, with the case taking its total personally as much as professionally.

Despite the positive aspects, the problem is though that I think for what should be a more serious film, there were moments of ridiculous nonsense which were unnecessary and took away from the film, in its humour and at time comic representations of various people (especially of the foreigners in Hong Kong). Tony Leung is excellent, but at times it was hard to see how his character really was a genius or was he just lucky. It just seemed to not add up. That kind of took away from the film.

Regardless of that, I thoroughly enjoyed the film and look forward to watching it again. I was surprised by the negative reponse by some to this film which is a shame. Maybe this film is a throwback to an old era of Asian gangster movies, which I admit is one I truly love. In this day, this film seems like a relic, but I don't care, I still find there's a place for films like this.

Personally, it's the best new film I've watched for a long time, and much better than any new film I watched over the past year in particular. I just hope that this film will help to introduce a new audience to Asian gangster movies, which rely on character and storyline as against CGI & comic book heroes.

I really recommend this film, it's been wonderful to watch these two great actors again a film that matches their status.

Wanted to see what grandpa Tony is up to these days. His most recent movies that I have seen are Hidden Blade and Shang-Chi. And he's looking very much like a grandpa on his socials, but they do some movie magic here cause he's perfectly refreshed. What I'm saying is I'm now attracted to grandpa Tony so there's that... He is really captivating here as the baddie, a very charismatic, chill dude, with plenty of hidden depths that are barely alluded to. He's always been good with that enigmatic smile of his.

Andy Lau and Tony Leung once again on opposite sides of the law, only here they switch places. So that was also exciting. They have plenty of scenes together but I wished for even more.

The first half hour is captivating enough but the following hour I admit I had to push through. There's a lot happening, a lot of characters and side plots and the execution is quite good overall, but I just wasn't that into it. The last half hour gets things back on track and got my attention again, exposing the scope of the scheme, the many ramifications and hidden figures and in the end the venality of the main orchestrator and it is a beautiful thing to uncover, I am just sorry about that middle part cause I don't know what happened there.

It's not Infernal Affairs and it's not Wolf of Wall Street but with this story it could've been and I don't know why it wasn't and I'm a little frustrated about it.

Also, I couldn't find a version in Cantonese so I couldn't relish Tony's voice and sometimes it's obvious that it's dubbed. I like Mandarin but I will always prefer the actors' voices.

There's a shot from the Goldfinger teaser that got me wildly excited: a close-up of Tony Leung biting a cigar smugly laughing with gold Mardi Gras raining down all around him.

Tony Leung's cheese-eating grin came across as an attempt at something new, different from the usual shy side smirk from his repertoire of introverted characters. Leung is creating a high-energy chaotic character, a performance we haven't seen yet.

In The Goldfinger, Tony Leung plays Henry Ching, a fictionalized version of real-life businessman and financial criminal George Tan who ran the Hong Kong conglomerate Carrian Group which collapsed from a corruption and fraud scandal in the 1980s.

Henry arrives under mysterious circumstances in Hong Kong in the 1970s, working his way up to founding the Carmen Group. The sudden collapse of a billion-dollar company due to a stock market crash draws the attention of ICAC prime investigator Lau Kai-yuen, who begins an investigation on Ching.

The Goldfinger is a disappointment. It pains to say...

Writer-director Felix Chong, one of the writers behind the Infernal Affairs trilogy, gets lost in an overbaked plot and delivers a flashy run-of-the-mill rise-to-fall crime thriller that sinfully misuses its two leads Tony Leung and Andy Lau.

Felix Chong gets caught up in window dressing the plot, using a non-linear structure of police interrogations conducted by Andy Lau's ICAC officer to fill in Henry Ching's past and set up the mystery behind Henry's secret money backer. It's a plot that Chong never gets the audience to care about.

The audience's priority is quite simple: to see Andy Lau and Tony Leung chewing scenery.

Infernal Affairs fans who are eagerly anticipating Tony Leung and Andy Lau's reunion will be let down. First off, Andy Lau is in a supporting role as the ICAC investigator. Secondly, Leung and Lau's scenes are procedural and plot-serving and lack the dramatic scene-chewing quality like the rooftop finale in Infernal Affairs.

As for Tony Leung's performance, it's an unsatisfying half-creation that lingers between the Tony Leung we're all familiar with and something brand new. The script positions Henry Ching as a mysterious cipher for so long that Leung never gets the screen time to properly develop his part.

Decked out in flashy expensive suits and tinted sunglasses, there are glimpses of the chaotic flamboyant Tony Leung that the trailer promised, but it's too few and far between, only appearing in montage moments-just enough to cut into a trailer!

What remains is Tony Leung's usual persona. As a result, the performance becomes an unfortunate case of the costume wearing the actor, like a cosplay.

Andy Lau is stuck in a bland stock hero role who's delivering exposition and driving the story, or rather investigation, forward. Lau is given a family subplot involving a disgruntled wife who's mad at him for neglecting his family for his job, but it goes nowhere.

It all fizzles out awkwardly at the end. As the end title cards are showing the fate of the characters, you realize the whole film is a string of historical facts.

I walked out of the theater bored and exhausted, contemplating how I got so excited over a trailer. Trailers lie. Lesson relearned.

Giving this an 8/10 rating

New crime thriller from the filmmakers of 'Infernal Affairs' which had Andy Lau in, and he's in this too, along with Tony Leung.

Tony Leung, plays an poor engineer who comes to Hong Kong seeking work and gets involved in wrong doing that escalates in him running a criminal empire of billions, Andy Lau, plays the police investigator who goes after him. It's all very complex and very tense.

It looks and feels of the era it's set in the 1980's and corruption is all over the place. Even the slow parts still engage and you see just how greedy people can really be. It's a lovely production and the acting is full on brilliant, which does make up for action, which there is some, it's not done with any glamour, it's done to shock. But it's really the two main leads who pull off the show, again. Another true story that I did not know about.

There's a Chinese saying called tiger head, snake tail, which perfectly describes the film. The Goldfinger starts with a bang with over the top scenes that harkens back to the heydays of HK cinema. But as the story progresses, you realize how thin of a plot the movie has. The film fails to develop further on what is a very interesting rivalry between Tony Leung and Andy Lau, even worse if you consider how much of a classic The Departed was. In the end, the film is too "business-oriented" and not driven by its story enough. To make matters worse, the ending feels like something to appease movie authorities.