A Gilded Game

猎金•游戏

Hong Kong/China/Canada, 2025, colour, 2.35:1, 128 mins.

Director: Qiu Litao 邱礼涛 [Herman Yau].

Rating: 6/10.

Drama set in the scumbag world of investment banking is entertaining enough, with some strong performances, but lacks dramatic clout and originality.

STORY

Huajing city, somewhere in China, the present day. University graduate Gao Han (Ou Hao), who’s from an average working-class family, finally gets a job in the finance industry, at Blue Stone China, an investment bank that is currently negotiating to handle the IPO of Zhuo Neng, a new energy equipment supplier. Zhuo Neng’s CEO, Chu Zhihong (Zhang Chenguang), is the father of Chu Feng (Liu Yihao), who was Gao Han’s best friend at university and whom the smart Gao Han helped a lot to graduate successfully. The job is a six-month internship with no pay; but such is Blue Stone’s reputation that Gao Han, who has only just over RMB3,000 in his bank account, accepts, turning down an offer of financial help from Chu Feng, who’s more interested in becoming a racing-car river than working at his father’s company. Mike (Zheng Zeshi), Blue Stone’s manager of direct investment, tells the new batch of interns that the company’s philosophy is win or nothing. Its managing director is the ruthless and cold Li Hailun (Huang Yi). Gao Han is assigned to work with Zhang Tuode, a veteran equity analyst who’s highly respected in the company but is somewhat eccentric and enjoys a drink or three. His kind-of-girlfriend is nightclub singer Li Anna (Ni Ni), to whom he regularly unburdens himself. Though he doesn’t usually work with interns, Zhang Tuode takes a liking to Gao Han, who handles himself well in negotiations with a fussy potential client, DYM Pharmaceuticals, even though Blue Stone doesn’t get the contract. Meanwhile, Li Hailun, who has never liked Zhang Tuode’s attitude towards her, plots his downfall with help from Mike. To get the IPO contract of dog-food supplier Lucky Dog, Gao Han undergoes humiliation by its femle owner, Ma Na (Tian Li); after testing his ambition, she then signs with a rival investment bank. Meanwhile, Zhang Tuode refuses to automatically sign off on a big job for HC Technology that Li Hailun has personally been handling, seeing it as a chance for her promotion to president of Blue Stone China. Zhang Tuode thinks her financial forecasts are poorly researched, and tells Gao Han to investigate the company. Meanwhile, Li Hailun offers Gao Han, whose internship is soon to end, a good fulltime job with Blue Stone if he can trick Zhang Tuode, who seems to trust him, into signing off on her forecasts.

REVIEW

Egos get bruised and ambition runs amok in A Gilded Game 猎金•游戏, a drama set in the world of investment banking and IPOs in which everyone – as if we need to be told – is a self-obsessed scumbag to one degree or another. The film’s view of big business and finance is as cynical as, say, Johnny Keep Walking! 年会不能停！ (2023) – minus the latter’s humour – but despite a generally fine cast it doesn’t quite develop the dramatic clout it should. Led by Hong Kong veteran Liu Dehua 刘德华 [Andy Lau] as an eccentric equity analyst, and including Mainland actors Ou Hao 欧豪 (as an ambitious intern) and Huang Yi 黄奕 (as their cool-as-ice, super-bitch boss), A Gilded Game jogs along entertainingly enough but has nothing new to say about greed or the greedy.

The last of three pictures that tireless Hong Kong film-maker Qiu Litao 邱礼涛 [Herman Yau], then 61, directed back-to-back in 2022 – the first two being Customs Frontline 海关战线 (2024) in Apr-Jun and Moscow Mission 93国际列车大劫案    莫斯科行动 (2023) in Jul-Oct – Game was shot in just five weeks during Oct-Nov, no doubt a welcome break for Qiu from action thrillers. Though it made no impression at this year’s sluggish Hong Kong box office, it took an okay RMB298 million on the Mainland, making it Qiu’s biggest success there since Moscow Mission. 

Qiu first worked with Liu over 30 years ago in crime comedy Don’t Fool Me! 中环英雄 (1991) but in recent years he’s become one of the megastar’s favourite directors, with one more movie still waiting in the wings, Covid drama 戰疫天使, shot in Shenzhen in late 2020. The two generally work well together, with Qiu’s exposition-led style chiming with Liu’s pragmatic acting, though in Game, despite being equipped with silver-streaked hair and professorial glasses, Liu (then 61) still looks and sounds boyish, without the physical and dramatic clout for the central role of the canny equity veteran. (However, as one of the film’s three creative producers 监制, such casting was obviously unnegotiable.)

It’s not a major problem, as Liu does manage to bring quite a bit of charm and humanity to the role, generally unburdening himself during scenes with Mainland actress Ni Ni 倪妮 as his down-to-earth kind-of-girlfriend who works as a nightclub singer. (Ni’s role is essentially a script device, though she does her best to flesh it out in her few scenes with Liu. She gets no mention in the main titles but a special credit prior to the final crawl.) Liu’s eccentric character, who trusts no one, has his own set of principles and likes a drink or three, is the emotional heart of the movie, which is otherwise populated by self-seeking, highly driven members of the investment banking world.

The audience’s way into this milieu is via a working-class university graduate, Gao Han, who lands his first job as an unpaid intern, and turns out to be as ruthless as any of the veterans around him. Expectedly, he learns the ways of the world and the wicked are (kind of) punished at the end, but there’s no great sense of any moral victory. As the quietly ambitious Gao Han, Ou (who starred in Qiu’s Raid on the Lethal Zone 绝地追击, 2023) has good chemistry with Liu but a characteristic lack of real personality.

It’s the older actors who provide the real character meat, like Hong Kong character veteran Zheng Zeshi 郑则士 [Kent Cheng] as a weasily manager, Taiwan TV actress Tian Li 田丽 as a manipulative CEO with some weird fantasies, Mainland veteran Zhang Qi 张琪 as a lavatory attendant who’s the only “real” person in the whole building, and – above all – Shanghai-born Huang, then 45, as Gao Han’s super-bitch boss who’s not above a bit of extra-curricular activity. Qiu gave Huang one of the best roles of her career in The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake 竞雄女侠秋瑾 (2011) and here the classy actress (The Legend Is Born: Ip Man 叶问前传, 2010; Overheard 2 窃听风云2, 2011; Drug War 毒战, 2012; Mortal Ouija 碟仙, 2019) chews the scenery and oozes mature, stylish sexiness as the ruthless m.d. of the investment bank who plots the downfall of Liu’s independent-minded analyst.

Qiu’s team of Hong Kong regulars turn in a good-looking product, from the flashy but soulless sets by Chen Jinhe 陈锦河 [Raymond Chan] that reflect the people who work in them to the cool, widescreen images of d.p. Chen Guanghong 陈广鸿 [Joe Chan] that don’t get in the way of the performances. The film could easily be tightened by 10 minutes, as the first hour is fairly leisurely and most of the plot’s “action” is squeezed into the final 40 minutes. A generous amount of soundtrack songs jollies things along, making up for the lack of internal tension to hold the whole movie together. However, by the end, with the immediate drama resolved, the picture ends in a so-what manner, with no striking scenes to resolve all the personal issues.

The Chinese title literally means “Hunting Gold, the Game”. During production the film was known as 东方华尔街, literally “Wall Street of the East”.

CREDITS

Presented by Guangzhou Yingming Cultural Communication (CN), Universe Entertainment (HK), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), AMTD Group (Canada) (CA). Produced by Universe Entertainment (HK).

Script: Qiu Litao [Herman Yau], Zhao Wenliang, Gao Yuhui. Photography: Chen Guanghong [Joe Chan]. Editing: Lin Ronglei. Music supervision: Mai Zhenhong [Brother Hung]. Art direction: Chen Jinhe [Raymond Chan]. Costume design: Luo Peisha. Styling: Zhang Shijie [Stanley Cheung]. Sound: Huang Yuanming, Chen Zhiyang. Visual effects: Peng Zhenguo. Executive direction: Li Yaoshu.

Cast: Liu Dehua [Andy Lau] (Zhang Tuode/Todd), Ou Hao (Gao Han), Ni Ni (Li Anna), Huang Yi (Li Hailun/Helen), Zheng Zeshi [Kent Cheng] (Mai Ke/Mike), Jiang Mengjie (Xu Xiaohui), Liu Yihao (Chu Feng), Tian Li (Ma Na, Lucky Dog CEO), Zhang Chenguang (Chu Zhihong, Zhuo Neng CEO, Chu Feng’s father), Lian Kai (Sha Liwen), Zhang Qi (He), Mai Changqing (Han Yingcai), Zhao Yonghong (ICAC officer), Li Mengnan (Gao Han’s father), Zhao Haiyan (Gao Han’s mother).

Release: Hong Kong, 8 May 2025; China, 1 May 2025; Canada, 9 May 2025.