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.
