Golden Job

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.

A great action movie performed by Chinese actors Asian movie is at a high level. Only artificial cars explosions are offended, you can see it with the naked eye. Shooting and fighting look more truly. I highly recommend it! Worth watching.

So overall the movie is good,, it has a nice plot , maybe i got a bit confused at first , because i was trying to know exactly which language they speak , Mandarin or Cantonese then they spoke Japanese somewhere mixed with English here and there so i think it confused me a bit but nonetheless the Action and explosions were extreme but good ,, the script was okay digestible and somewhat easily followable .. the CGI and visual effects were spot on for once ,,

The cast did good engaged well ,,, and at the end when things got emotional the did well too.

as i said at the beginning it might get a bit too extreme for you with all the overdosed action and explosions but the story is worth it.. Recommended.

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

Give it a miss.

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.