The Goldfinger Review: Flashy, Episodic Tony Leung-Andy Lau Financial-Fraud Reunion Drama Doesn’t Live Up To Its Hype

The Goldfinger (PG13)

Starring Tony Leung, Andy Lau, Charlene Choi, Simon Yam

Directed by Felix Chong

Twenty years after their face-off in Internal Affairs III, this long-awaited reunion between Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau doesn't live up to its hype.

Writer-director Felix Chong (co-writer of the Infernal Affairs trilogy) says in the production notes that, “When they’re together, there’s tension even when they’re only looking at each other.”

Tony smiles as the charismatic crook; Andy frowns as the crusading officer. In between is a The Wolf Of Wall Street wannabe coasting on Leung's star power since Lau plays a glorified supporting role.

Compared to Chong's intriguing The Usual Suspects-inspired Project Gutenberg, this is a flat one-direction train ride with Leung as its gleeful, Leonardo DiCaprio-flashy driver. It's primarily episodic while chugging on two adjacent narrative strands with too much commercial-crime overflow. Never letting us know the motivations of folks here, both good and bad.

You wait for one big, profound Gotcha moment. Keep waiting.

Conman-manipulator Henry Ching (Leung) tells his story about going from miserably skint to mythically rich. Dogged ICAC investigator Lau Kai Yuen (Lau), too busy even for his family, hauls in prime suspects to clue us in on this astonishing 1970s/early 1980s scammer's tale. “How many times have you arrested me?” the slippery heel taunts the hunter.

It's a kick seeing Leung play a rags-to-riches swaggerer in freewheeling roguish enterprise smoking cigars, duping loaded bastards, plotting brazen crime (including murder), and filling the boardroom with dancing girls and confetti ala the Fourth Of July.

But this is basically another overcooked, seen-before ICAC (Hong Kong's anti-corruption task force) nab job in which we half expect Louis Koo to pop up. Why do big-event HK flicks often run with greed and fraud?

Much of the zing is gone because we're watching this in its hollow Mandarin-dubbed version. Just the Cantonese trailer alone is zippier than this entire Mando movie.

The Goldfinger is interesting if you're a HK-er of a certain age. Director Chong says he's fascinated by the “financial tsunamis” he grew up witnessing. This pic is based on the infamous Carrian Group — dubbed “Carmen Century Group” here — the conglomerate built on dubious shares which Godzilla-size collapsed in 1982 after a stock market crash.

The real swindler, George Tan, apparently worked in Singapore as an engineer in the 1960s. That's as far as our interest goes despite bits and pieces sprinkled like a highlight reel about Ching's shady Southeast Asian origins.

Chong clearly figures that Leung's presence alone front-and-centre is worth the ticket. Boy, is the dude in fine tickle-me-showy form.

He plays people like a hot-and-cold violin. Including Charlene Choi as his loyal secretary Carmen, Simon Yam as his business partner KK Tsang, and one real-estate sucker whom he fools gloriously while posing as a fake Dato.

Thing is, we don't really know what drives this fella and his persistent pursuer. Despite plenty of impressive scenes of loud unbridled avarice, it's the quieter ones that linger.

Ching picking up, with resolve, the business cards he gives to snooty, racist rich Brits who dump them humiliatingly on the floor.

And Tony Leung and Andy Lau showing us in a tense mano-a-mano confrontation in a hospital room what their big-deal chemistry is all about.

“How many zeros is it worth?” the moral man asks about the bribe if he helps the immoral conman.

A big one.

If they get more scenes like that together. (2.5/5 stars)

Photos: Shaw Organisation