Jin shou zhi

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.

It kinda reminds me of a Chinese TV series called The Knockout (Kuang Biao), given their similar duo-protagonists, ambitious-police-versus-powerful-criminal setups. But really, The Goldfinger is extremely fluent and complete, with a convoluted plot, captivating narrative, and outstanding performances across the board. Some of investigation and stock center scenes impressed me especially, which are perceptibly well-considered and thought-out. I see no immediate flaw after my first watch-through. If we have to knit pick, I guess some of the dangling threads in the first half could be resolved with more detail, for instance Carmen's part and KK's end. Overall, I'd say this is one of the best Chinese films of the year.

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!

I am very curious about what happened to this film.

It's like a chef preparing high-end ingredients to make a stunning dish for diners, but halfway through, he suddenly finds that the natural gas has run out, and there is no other heat source available, so he can only rely on the residual heat in the pot to cook the dish.

The first half of the film is undoubtedly a good one. Seeing Tony Leung and Andy Lau opposite each other will make people wonder whether it can reach the height of "Infernal Affairs". As a result, it completely collapsed in the second half. The narrative advancement relied entirely on voiceover dictation, and every scene that could have been polished turned into a few seconds scenes.

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.