The Goldfinger Review Infernal Affairs Duo Swap Sides For New Cop V Robber Clash
The grueling Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs was one of the best films of the early 2000s. The film starred Tony Leung Chiu Wai as a police officer in the Triad gang, alongside Andy Lau as a police spy. The film was remade by Martin Scorsese in The Departed with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon. Twenty years later, the Leung/Lau dream team returns in another detective thriller written and directed by the original film's co-writer Felix Chung. Although this new film actually shares more DNA with two Scorsese films, The Wolf of Wall Street and Goodfellas. That's exactly what Scorsese found when he was high on cocaine.
Goldfinger is an elegant, elegant and somewhat shallow saga of crime and corruption spanning 15 years from the 1970s to the end of British rule in Hong Kong. Leung Chiu-wai is a fraud this time. He plays Henry Cheng, a bankrupt consultant who makes his first million in real estate by pretending to be a wealthy real estate developer. Within ten years it will reach billions.
There are plenty of scenes of casino capitalism here: madness on the stock trading floor, greed and refined debauchery in mirrored nightclubs. To be honest, everything is very simple. Andy Lau plays a detective who wants to destroy Cheng at the expense of his career and family life. As he grew richer, his china suits became shinier and his cigars fatter. Gleaming glass skyscrapers rise higher and higher. Which is very deep and deep psychologically. Cheng is a disappointingly closed book, and the film gives no hint of his greed and impulsiveness.
That doesn't mean you can go wrong with acting. Behind the salesman's smile, Leung Chiu Wai has a predatory glow and Leung looks like a destructive good man for most of the film. What's really missing is a head-to-head showdown between Leung and Lau. The scenario raises the possibility that Cheng may not be the leader above all, but the leader of other interests, but it leads nowhere. All in all, it's really not worth the wait.
