Golden Job

A peculiar brotherhood of thieves,doing heists in hungary,japan,and montenegro,so there are lots of different spice to boost an action thriller. the filming and sound are great,acting impeccible,the editing and directing are smart and the special effects are good.some of the car driving scenes are spectacular.. there are 0.001% romance in this flick,the rest is pure speed though i felt the blood spatter meter went over the top,i can recommend this film,its good.

These Hong Kong actors are like Hollywood's Rat Pack, a group likes to stay together not just on the screen but also off it. These guys are the mid older generation actors, but none of them is actually talented enough to be called "great actor". Now, they are becoming older, even past their prime, but together, they have the powerful influence in Hong Kong's movie business.

By the over-the-top settings covering Europe and Japan, lot of exotic cars smashing, crashing lot of buildings, interrupting the traffic wherever they shot those car chasing and gun fighting scenes, the production budget obviously was so big, but sadly, it was developed on a weak, loose, and ridiculous messy screenplay, scenarios and plots, extremely cliche'd. Typical Hong Kong style but like these actors, it's not a good enough, matured enough movie, so formulaic and one-way predictable, no matter how much they spent on the special effects, CGI graphic and stunt coordination.

The worst part in this movie is their Cantonese dialog, a quite ugly dialect that simply lack the seriousness what a suspenseful action thriller should be even with the good English or Chinese subtitles.

I gather Golden Job is some sort of sequel to an earlier series of Hong Kong action pictures. It's glossy, well-produced and like the very similar The Adventurers, was mainly filmed in a variety of European locations. It's like an oriental blend of Ocean's 11, with the more recent remake of The Italian Job, with a lot less plot and far more, (predictable) seen before, highly choreographed action scenes.

The acting from the very much male dominated cast is strictly cardboard, run of the mill. The women folk are very much shuffled to the sidelines to get out of the way of the boys having fun and creating much chaos with their big, fancy toys. I think there are only 2 tiny roles. One is of a rather silly girl, who later becomes your regulation damsel in distress and the other is a do-gooder of a doctor working in an African village.

The narrative tries to be multi-layered but is clearly faking it and simply exists to allow us to move between action scenes. All I can further add, is that I really hope the calibre of Golden Job isn't indicative of the quality of the earlier films. I think I'd prefer a dose of John Woo's 80's and 90's material any day to this derivative, generic product.

Golden Job is a fast-paced Hong Kong action movie reminding of the genre's golden era between the late eighties and mid-nineties. The film is similar to other contemporary genre flicks like The Adventurers and Europe Raiders.

The movie convinces with a steady pace from start to finish. The action sequences are fluid and spectacular. The car chases towards the movie's climax and the infiltration of the fortress during the falling action and resolution are particularly memorable. The settings are also interesting as the film takes places in an African refugee camp, in the beautiful city of Budapest, in a traditional Japanese village, in the flashy city of Fukuoka and on the stunning coast of Montenegro.

On the negative side, the plot is predictable and almost shallow as one has seen similar movies on numerous occasions. A group of five orphans are adopted by a caring father and become mercenaries for a good cause. One of them gets corrupted by greed and turns against them. The remaining four brothers try to save him but things soon get too far. The fact that an intense action movie tries to be moralizing and attempts to teach lessons about family values is somehow misplaced and even cheesy. The film also features uninteresting side stories such as the eldest orphan and his love interest from a refugee camp or the adoptive father and his immersive experience in a Japanese village. The special effects look somewhat artificial at times, contrasting the almost philosphical content oddly.

If you like Hong Kong action cinema, you can't go wrong with the intense Golden Job. If you expect anything creative, profound or unique being added to the traditional genre, you will end up being disappointed. Golden Job is a good average genre movie that will grab your attention for one hour and a half but quickly be forgotten soon after. At the end of the day, I would only recommend this movie to genre fans.

I tried watching this tongue in cheek action movie but it was so silly that I gave up.

Give it a miss.