Jin shou zhi

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 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.

The last cooperation of Tony Leung and Andy Lau is "Infernal Affairs", which is over 20 years ago! The Goldfinger is a true scam adapted into a movie, which presents the 80s of Hong Kong perfectly! Before watching the movie, I have spent a great deal of time to conduct the research of the historical scam, as i think the mastermind of this case was so terrible and crazy! Undoubtedly, the movie show us that money is the chief of all evil and how did a largest business deception work superbly. Tony Leung exquisite acting skills lead audiences feel like engaging into the capital empire. I was so happy that he get the Best Actor in 42nd Hong Kong Film Award through this amazing movie!

Bond-adjacent title aside, The Goldfinger throws everything at the screen, including different film styles, stocks and interstitial musical montages, in the vain hope that kinetic energy might be mistaken for dramatic power. It's far from the reunion between Lau and Leung that fans of Hong Kong cinema have been waiting for, instead coming across as more of a hollow wet fart in this by-the-numbers, overcomplicated Wolf of Wall Street clone without any of the filmmaking confidence to pull it off successfully. It all feels like it's been run through a mainland China viewing board to become a curiously uninvolving work that takes what sounds like a potentially fascinating story and somehow manages to render it mostly inert due to a disappointingly shallow treatment. Lau and Leung are more than capable actors but with a standardised narrative that doesn't challenge them in any way, they ultimately sleepwalk their way through the film. Ultimately, The Goldfinger is a hard one to recommend, there's no fun to be had here, it's all brutally shallow and lacking in dexterity, only really worth something to those well-versed or interested in stock market manipulation. I'm sure there will be an inevitable sequel, presumably titled The Thunderball or The Goldeneye...

Back in the 1970s, Hong Kong was riddled with corrupt officials that the Government determined to bring to book. Much to the chagrin of one of the principal culprits - the police - they established an anti-corruption unit charged with addressing this problem, and thanks to one of their lead investigators (Andy Lau) they succeed! Many years later, when the British and Chinese start to talk about the colony's reunification, the Stock Market plummets and he is brought back to investigate the wealthy boss of a large network of companies (Tony Leung) who is living his gilded life of luxury whilst his investors seem to be losing their shirts. As he looks into things more, he discovers an intricate web of subsidiaries, bribery and shell companies that prove to resemble the ultimate in ponzi schemes. It's not just the enterprise that is suspect, but he gradually realises that the dodgy establishment he had hoped he had helped to dismantle years earlier had just, very efficiently, reinvented itself - and it permeates through to the top echelons of society. The film is based on real events and so, like them, we have peaks and troughs as the plot develops. That's where the film rather loses it's way. At it's best, it's tightly structured with a good dynamic between the policeman and his prey. For most of the rest of it, it rather meanders along with a real paucity of detail and little effort to show us just how charisma and charm duped just about everyone. A decent effort from Lau and Leung but it's a long two hours that skimps too much on the interesting aspects of an business that spanned the world at it's peak, run by a sleazy and unscrupulous man.