Bond-adjacent title aside, The Goldfinger throws everything at the screen, including different film styles, stocks and interstitial musical montages, in the vain hope that kinetic energy might be mistaken for dramatic power. It's far from the reunion between Lau and Leung that fans of Hong Kong cinema have been waiting for, instead coming across as more of a hollow wet fart in this by-the-numbers, overcomplicated Wolf of Wall Street clone without any of the filmmaking confidence to pull it off successfully. It all feels like it's been run through a mainland China viewing board to become a curiously uninvolving work that takes what sounds like a potentially fascinating story and somehow manages to render it mostly inert due to a disappointingly shallow treatment. Lau and Leung are more than capable actors but with a standardised narrative that doesn't challenge them in any way, they ultimately sleepwalk their way through the film. Ultimately, The Goldfinger is a hard one to recommend, there's no fun to be had here, it's all brutally shallow and lacking in dexterity, only really worth something to those well-versed or interested in stock market manipulation. I'm sure there will be an inevitable sequel, presumably titled The Thunderball or The Goldeneye...
Review of The Goldfinger
