Sweaty-palmed Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs was one of the best films of the early 00s; in it, Tony Leung Chiu-wai played a cop undercover in a triad gang, alongside Andy Lau as a mole in the police force. The movie was remade by Martin Scorsese into The Departed with Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon. Twenty years later the Leung/Lau dream team is back for another cat-and-mouse cop thriller written and directed by the original film’s co-writer Felix Chong. Though actually this new movie shares more DNA with a couple of Scorseses: The Wolf of Wall Street and Goodfellas. Not that it fully comes up on a rollicking Scorsese cocaine high.
The Goldfinger is a slick, stylish and slightly shallow crime’n’corruption saga spanning 15 years beginning in the 1970s as Hong Kong neared the end of British rule. Leung Chiu-wai is the crook this time around; he plays Henry Ching, a penniless chancer who makes his first million in real estate by pretending to be a wealthy property developer. Within a decade he’s worth billions.
There are plenty of scenes here of casino capitalism: frenzy on the stock-market trading floor and greed is good debauchery in mirrored nightclubs. Though it’s all pretty tame to be honest. Andy Lau plays an investigator who becomes obsessed with bringing Ching down at the expense of his career and family life. As he gets richer, Ching’s suits get shinier, his cigars fatter. The gleaming glass skyscrapers get taller. Which is about as deep and psychologically insightful as it gets: Ching is frustratingly a closed book, and the film barely drops a clue about his greed and drive.
Not that you can fault the acting. Leung Chiu-wai has a predatory glint behind the salesman’s grin, and Lau has the beaten look of a man bested for much of the movie. What’s really missing is a Leung/Lau face off, an epic confrontation. The script dangles the headspinning possibility that Ching might not be the kingpin after all, but a frontman for other interests, but that goes nowhere. As a whole, this doesn’t really feel worth the wait.
• The Goldfinger is released on 30 December in UK, Irish and Australian cinemas.
