Text/Ye Qiuchen
It is no exaggeration. Ever since the news of the movie "Goldfinger" came out, I moved the small bench early and waited for it to be released.
grew up watching Hong Kong movies and dramas, and with Tony Leung and Andy Lau collaborating again, expectations have been high.
Zhuang Wenqiang, one of the screenwriters of "Infernal Affairs", became the director and screenwriter of "Goldfinger" this time.
"Wushuang", which has been previously evaluated as "Hong Kong movies are still around", was also produced by him. The creative team of
can achieve this configuration and at the same time attach the Hong Kong flavor label. If we work hard, it will definitely shine.
But after watching it, Ye Qiuchen had three regrets about the film.
My first regret is that I didn’t see the Cantonese version.
I scanned the film schedules of almost all nearby theaters, and even looked at places farther away, but still got nothing. I was forced to watch the Mandarin version. I obviously saw Cantonese dialogue in the movie introduction, but it seems to be there in name only. Just because it exists doesn’t mean you can find it.
It is obvious that many emotions and atmosphere have been eaten away by the dubbing, and the final effect of the film is instantly weaker by several levels.
If it were the original sound, the explosive power would definitely be more than that.
The second regret is that due to many restrictions, a lot of scale and depth were not captured. The content that can be expanded in
is very short and obscure, and some dark places and relationships seem to be neither photographable nor allowed to be photographed.
The third regret is that the ending is too obscure and hasty, and the emotional transition is too abrupt.
Cheng Yiyan seemed to have met a well-deserved end, but compared with how he had been able to maneuver among various forces before, it was obvious that this move had other motives. Ye Qiuchen will expand on the issue of
in the following in-depth analysis.
The content below will contain a lot of spoilers, so please proceed with caution.
. About the background
Most of the Hong Kong films we have been exposed to before, such as "Chasing the Dragon" and "Inspector Lei Luo", etc., stopped abruptly when the icac appeared and started to rectify the work.
or the Independent Commission Against Corruption in works such as "Anti-Corruption" are already stories that unfold after the agency is on track.
On the other hand, the chaotic transition period from emergence to maturity is rarely mentioned.
"Goldfinger" spent a few minutes at the beginning to fill in the gaps in this part. The police outside shouted that they wanted to "bring down the Independent Commission Against Corruption" to "protect the dignity of the police" and threatened to smash the ICAC.
All the well-fed forces are dissatisfied with this, and the people working inside are even more trembling, walking on thin ice.
Frankly speaking, the icac organization was in an extremely difficult position at that time, struggling to survive in the mezzanine. It was not just the image in our mind of just holding a piece of paper and making a glorious appearance. The sadness inside
is unknown.
What Liu Qiyuan (played by Andy Lau) has experienced is just the tip of the iceberg.
is truly dark, cruel, far more complicated and complicated than what the movie shows.
While watching the movie, I felt that the director was quite interesting.
He briefly flashed a large amount of key content in front of the audience with tiny white characters on a black background, and it was obvious that he was trying his best to hide the important information involved.
It was as if the amnesty order for previous crimes, as well as the number of years Cheng Yiyan was ultimately sentenced, were quickly passed by for fear of being remembered by everyone.
This is probably a desire to survive.
respects the facts and weakens the negative impact.
According to information on the Internet, the prototype of the character Cheng Yiyan in "Goldfinger" is Chen Songqing, who was a sensation at that time. The case also refers to the "Jia Ning Conspiracy Case", one of the top ten mysterious cases in Hong Kong (film The episode about undercover Anwen in the movie is mentioned), and this Jianing Group is the prototype of the Jiawen Group in the film.
Moreover, almost all the main characters who appear in the movie can find similar prototypes in reality, including Zeng Cambridge (played by Simon Yam) who collaborated with Cheng Yiyan, Ho Haoyun (played by Chan Jiale) whose father was a banker, and even the lawyer Kelvin (played by Chen Jiale) (played by Fang Zhongxin) can all correspond one to one. This story is indeed a bit long, so Ye Qiuchen will not go into too much details here. If you are interested, you can search it yourself according to the keywords.
. About the characters
The story of the movie "Goldfinger" is actually an artistically processed history of a liar's fortune.
In that chaotic era, it was already difficult for ordinary people to just want to live a good life, but scammers were thriving.
Before coming to Hong Kong to make money, Cheng Yiyan (played by Tony Leung) was an ordinary person who went bankrupt and wanted to find an industrial job to make a living.
A wise man will find a way wherever he goes.
If it weren't for his past experience, knowledge and courage in speaking, he wouldn't be able to fool Wu Rensong (played by Taibao) even if he pretends to be an admiral.
In order to catch a big fish, Cheng Yiyan still used his only income to tip the waiters when he could not afford the rent, just to prove to Brother Song that he also had strong financial strength. This alone made most of the people No one can do it.
deceives investors without a blushing face, and it is difficult to tell the truth from the lie as soon as he opens his mouth.
Watching the scenes between Cheng Yiyan and Wu Rensong, I immediately thought of "Cat and Mouse Game". What the two have in common is that they both show us the methods and psychology of high-level liars. Under certain circumstances, and even at certain moments, they even believed that the lies were true, and at the same time they were able to discern and deceive them clearly.
Cheng Yiyan relied on his superb deception skills to quickly solve Zeng Cambridge's priceless land sales problem, and the two entered into an in-depth cooperative relationship.
But an intimate relationship based on lies is destined to not be sincere and long-lasting.
It is easy to share wealth and wealth, but there is no chance to share adversity.
When disaster strikes, they all fly away.
As it turns out, this is indeed the case.
At first, Cheng Yiyan’s journey of making a fortune was not smooth.
When he went to hand over his business card, he was thrown directly to the ground. When he picked it up, he accidentally met Musala Hafa (played by Jiang Haowen), who works for the Bank of East Malaysia, which made its fortune in oil.
The most critical factor in doing business is start-up capital. Through fraud and bribery, and relying on loans that were easily approved, Cheng Yiyan got the basic first pot of gold.
Face and money determine how big your business can be and how far it can go.
Money begets money, it is a very simple concept.
But if you want to make everything fast and reasonable, it will test the operator's skills and methods.
In fact, Cheng Yiyan had already thought of his escape plan from the beginning. He had never obtained a Hong Kong identity and had hired employees to open the company on his behalf. The earliest one in
is Zhang Jiawen (played by Charlene Choi).
Since I have been in a juvenile prison, it is probably difficult to find a job anywhere, so I can only try my luck at a start-up company. In this way,
met Cheng Yiyan.
Cheng Yiyan retained this woman with a salary of HK$8,000 and allowed her to attend various major events, seeming to package her into a strong career woman. The
movie describes relatively little about the relationship between the two. There must be that kind of relationship, but it was not filmed. Except for a passionate kiss scene, everything is just a scratch.
Especially in order to please Ren Chong (played by Wang Chong, played by Bai Zhi), Cheng Yiyan directly set up a beauty trap through Zhang Jiawen.
stock Wang Chong completely became a person on his own ship, and Zhang Jiawen also maintained a long-term and stable love relationship with him.
I think the two of them have developed a true relationship, otherwise they would not choose to escape by boat together at the most critical moment.
Zhang Jiawen also learned from Wang Chong that the word "Jiawen" in Jiawen Group was not actually because of him.
When Cheng Yiyan left 8,000 Hong Kong dollars, the only thing he really liked was the same two characters in the name as his wife (Luo Jiawen).
In order to use "Jiawen" to start a company, this little money is naturally nothing.
came to the end, and it turned out that he was just a stand-in.
Ye Qiuchen discovered that Zhuang Wenqiang really likes the concept of substitutes in love. The same is true for Zhang Jingchu's two characters in "Wushuang".
Liu Qiyuan's role positioning is similar to the "Hong Kong version of An Xin".
In order to bring "Gao Qiqiang" in his life to justice, he paid the time and price, and also made his family worry about him.
In the entire film, the only scene in which Liu Qiyuan seems to have wavered in his position is when he asks if he can help Cheng Yiyan escape guilt, can he add a few zeros to the end of the scholarship for his eldest daughter who is about to go abroad.
But he is not really corrupt, but a way of testing the bottom line.
Naturally, this could not fool an old fox like Cheng Yiyan, so they broke up on bad terms.
We really want to be grateful that there are still people like An Xin and Liu Qiyuan in this world who stick to justice.
It’s not that they are unintelligent, they are just unwilling to use their intelligence to do bad things and harm others.
Liu Qiyuan was able to find out from the clue that all transaction numbers can be divided by 101 that Cheng Yiyan paid bribes through stock transactions, and the extra 1 was the 1% commission.
is naturally invisible to ordinary people.
then searched deeper and deeper, and more and more people were involved.
still remembers the first time Liu Qiyuan caught Cheng Yiyan, it was in the kitchen.
Although he was not handcuffed when he was arrested, he was put in waist cuffs and 113 accountants were brought with him. This must have been a big battle.
No matter how flawless the evidence chain was, Cheng Yiyan was acquitted.
He bribed all relevant personnel with stocks, because as long as people come to arrest and judge, there will be loopholes to exploit.
Greed is everywhere.
Just like what is said in the film, an international white glove like Cheng Yiyan has so much money that even human life is nothing, and money is even more inconspicuous.
This is a relationship of both prosperity and loss. Cheng Yiyan is an indispensable key factor and must be preserved.
When he is about to touch the core interests of the big guys behind the scenes, there is no need for Cheng Yiyan to remove the stumbling blocks by himself. There are people with big votes who want to kill Liu Qiyuan and silence him.
This group of people does all kinds of evil, even their family members are not spared.
In fact, Cheng Yiyan did have a lot of human life cases on his hands.
The most critical thing is the undercover An Wen sent by the Bank of East Malaysia to investigate.
How could a person who obtained a huge loan exceeding the original limit not attract attention?
This revealed Cheng Yiyan's shocking conspiracy to manipulate the market, people's hearts, and everything through Jiawen Group's stocks.
. About stocks
If you don’t understand the detailed settings related to stocks in "Goldfinger", then the movie will basically be in vain.
For people who now use software to trade stocks, the handwritten method of selling stocks seemed relatively unfamiliar at that time.
But if you have watched Hong Kong dramas such as "Big Time", you will be familiar with it.
You post a price to sell, and people who come to buy cross out the corresponding numbers. Just write
and stroke it, and a transaction is done.
Cheng Yiyan initially thought about stocks simply, thinking that with a little money he could acquire the stocks of listed companies. Unexpectedly, he failed in the first battle.
The person who taught him a lesson was Brother Song’s favorite trader, Stock Wang Chong.
At that time, Jiawen Group took over almost everything in the daily life of ordinary people. The money in the industry had been exhausted, and it was almost impossible to make progress.
So, he set his target on the stock market. If
wants to continue to expand the scale of its business, it can only move from industrial to virtual. After
used a honey trap to win over Wang Chong, the next step was to "build momentum."
Good news can push up stock prices, but often the sources of these news are deliberately released and are just trading methods.
Some people didn’t understand the scene about the sale of Jinshan Building and found it too messy to understand.
For example, if retail investors want to buy stocks, how can they take money out of their pockets for a company they have never heard of?
But if he learned through various gossips that this company was about to buy the most expensive office building in Hong Kong, the treatment would be extraordinary. The
movie once foreshadowed Cheng Yiyan's obsession with Jinshan Tower. In fact, he didn't have feelings for the building. He knew what to use to build momentum more effectively.
So, he deliberately took out a loan to buy this office building, and then deliberately let out the news that someone was taking the offer to buy it, and his profits skyrocketed.
bluff.
Stock speculation at that time was actually speculation on news and insider information.
But the actual inside story is only known to the operator. The leeks believed this show, and the banks believed it.
They sent their own money and loans.
and all these have become Jiawen’s stocks.
In fact, the sources of funds in Hong Kong have always been transparent in the minds of the big guys.
Cheng Yiyan, who suddenly appeared, could actually have such a huge sum of money, and it was not through channels they knew, which made this matter even more mysterious.
Therefore, there is a scene in the movie where everyone talks nonsense about the source of funds, and there is a novel plot like encountering a gangster by chance.
are all fake. The big financier behind
is the Haiguo Bank mentioned earlier.
Stocks are booming frequently, retail investors are buying like crazy, and stock prices are soaring instantly.
In Cheng Yiyan's case, stocks can really be used as money.
He wanted to bribe someone, so he gave him some Jiawen stocks at a certain price.
includes obtaining loans from Haiguo Bank and also using stocks for internal operations. There is no actual cash transaction in
, which not only ensures confidentiality but also achieves personal goals.
, especially Jiawen's stock, has been rising, which is equivalent to giving out a large gift package with an uncertain value, and those who accept it also enjoy the benefits.
At this time, everyone has been tied to the same boat, and they must work together to do a good job for Jiawen.
If Jiawen’s stock is good, everyone will be good.
Then use the connections to take out the money from the pockets of the upper-class buddies to perform a show, and the leeks will believe it even more.
The stronger the momentum of the stock price, the more market makers and retail investors come to buy the stock, thus forming a virtuous cycle.
Later, almost everyone held Jiawen stocks.
At first, what is most needed to control the stock market is money, but later on, what is most needed is to control people's hearts.
I still remember that when Cheng Yiyan was struggling in the end, Jiawen was about to collapse, but he was telling everyone to pay dividends per share, which was to continue giving false benefits.
Even though Cheng Yiyan and Jiawen Group are prospering and everyone is happy about the high stock price, their cash flow is very tight.
Selling a large number of stocks can indeed cash out, but it will also cause the stock price to drop too seriously and easily trigger market panic.
So when I encounter a problem, I can only go to the bank to continue the loan. In the past,
relied on Cheng Yiyan's "credibility" and company's "performance" to successfully cooperate with various banks. In the movie
, there is a meeting between Jiawen Group and the bank. The loan amount directly soared to 168 (one hundred and sixty-eight million). Just because of the homonym of "all the way" that was said casually, you know how absurd and funny this thing is. .
The money was given by banks and stock investors, and what Cheng Yiyan did was the ultimate act of being a wolf with nothing.
As long as the stock continues to rise, none of this will go wrong.
If you sell a little bit, you can pay off part of the bank's loan and interest, and then you can mortgage the stock to continue borrowing.
But for many reasons, the stock market crash came.
Even the best traders in the world cannot resist the general trend.
The balance was broken, and the Jiawen stocks that had been robbed in the past suddenly turned into money-losing stocks.
Contradictions and conflicts broke out.
. About the ending
When he just finished watching the movie, what Ye Qiuchen didn’t understand the most was the ending, which lacked the rationality of the connection. Why did
plead guilty? Does
have another purpose?
You are tired and don’t want to continue fighting? The big guys behind
have given up on this important tool?
I'm too lazy to bother, so I just go in and stay for a while to avoid the limelight?
Delayed justice is not real justice after all.
Liu Qiyuan spent almost his entire career and was arrested for the eighth time before Cheng Yiyan was sent to prison. In the end, he was only sentenced to 3 years (referring to the experience of the prototype Chen). The number
means that no evidence was found in those murder cases, so the prosecution was not successful in the end.
When he caught this old fox, Cheng Yiyan had already enjoyed a life of wealth and luxury. So what if
is judged.
Moreover, Cheng Yiyan will definitely be transferred to the detention ward due to his age, physical condition and other reasons. The actual time served should be very short compared to his crime.
So, is this a happy ending?
Does justice really defeat evil?
may not.
. About actors
When the cast list for the movie came out, Tony Leung was ranked ahead of Andy Lau.
Considering the positioning of the protagonist and the proportion of the scenes, there is no problem with this operation.
Let’s not talk about the drama, but simply talk about some of the feelings of these two people from "Infernal Affairs" to now.
Due to the character setting, Andy Lau in this movie is indeed not as good as Tony Leung, just like An Xin is not as popular as Gao Qiqiang.
The just side always has many concerns.
The bad guys can not restrain their hands and create an uninhibited and free feeling.
But putting these aside, I went back to watch some works in which Andy Lau played the villain, and finally understood why Tony Leung Chiu-wai won the Best Actor in "Infernal Affairs".
lacks detail in comparison.
Playing opposite Tony Leung Chiu-wai is the only time I feel Andy Lau has fallen behind in these years. It is not because Andy Lau's acting skills are not good enough. I have written in many articles before that he is already at the top level.
But if Andy Lau has 90 points, then Tony Leung is at 95 points.
does not consider the role bonus and the proportion of scenes. Some rival scenes even reduced Andy Lau to the position of prime supporting role.
Of course, these are all differences in personal aesthetics. If you have different opinions, you are welcome to discuss them.
There are many familiar faces in "Goldfinger", including many of the Emperor's own children. Charlene Choi is the most conspicuous among them.
In the past, I always felt that she was "frozen in age", but this time her performance in the movie did feel a bit old.
There is a scene where she lights two cigarettes, and she obviously looks and feels different from the little girl back then.
In addition, there are many friendly guest appearances in the film, such as Anita Yuen, who plays the final sentencing judge.
Overall, the filming of "Goldfinger" was actually a bit uninteresting. There were no goosebump-inducing scenes. It felt like a movie designed just to show the extravagant life of a con man.
But there is one scene in it that I really like and want to share with you.
In the process of making a fortune, Cheng Yiyan, in order to expand his network of contacts, even though he already had some power, he still had to kowtow to those who could be used and completely turn this group of upper-class people into his tools.
The young man who said he looked down on country bumpkins was still tempted to the point of losing his mind in front of the transparent glass cabinet containing the beautiful woman.
took great photos.
Because this scene tells everyone that everyone is just an object for appreciation in the window.
In fact, it is not just these women in the glass cabinet, but also so-called respectable figures like Cheng Yiyan and others.
Throughout the movie, Ye Qiuchen was deeply impressed by what Cheng Yiyan said, which completely refreshed my understanding of predators.
This is just a group of people who work hard in the capital market. Everyone thinks that they are the golden fingers that turn stones into gold, but in fact they are just white gloves that are thrown away after use.
The real boss is invisible and invisible.
This group of seemingly beautiful existences on the surface, all those who knew part of the truth, were eventually secreted.
They also know that they are already worthless abandoned children.
For these people, being in jail is nothing, only living is important.
But living is already a luxury. What about the
guys?
continues to sit quietly, waiting for the next group of people to come on board and start things again.
Cheng Yiyan once asked Liu Qiyuan to release those "friends", but this request did not mean to save them, but to mess with them, so as to achieve the state of having no evidence.
Then find an obedient scapegoat and close the case as soon as possible.
Going out does not mean freedom and relief.
In reality, there is never true freedom.
text/Ye Qiuchen
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