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Review | A Gilded Game movie review: Oho Ou, Andy Lau navigate the dangerous world of IPO listings

Lau plays an equity analyst and Ou his protégé, a fresh-faced bank hire chasing a big deal, in Herman Yau’s financial drama

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Andy Lau as equity analyst Todd Zhang in a still from A Gilded Game (category IIA; Mandarin), directed by Herman Yau Lai-to. Oho Ou co-stars.

2.5/5 stars

The dehumanising tendency of corporate finance and the merciless nature of stock market speculation serve as the basis for much of the drama in A Gilded Game, a mildly diverting film presumably made for viewers who won’t mind its predictably moralistic lecturing tone.

For admirers of Hong Kong director Herman Yau Lai-to, this mainland Chinese production should be welcomed as a necessary change of pace after he dedicated much of the past decade to making action thrillers, including four produced and headlined by Andy Lau Tak-wah: Shock Wave 1 and 2, The White Storm 2, and Moscow Mission.

In A Gilded Game, Lau takes a back seat to finance graduate Gao Han (Oho Ou Hao). A small-town boy with “no connections”, he gets an internship at a top investment bank because he is a friend of Chu Feng (Jasper Liu Yi-hao), the son of the owner of a new-energy giant with which the bank is seeking to strike a deal for an initial public offering.

Initially looked down on by the bank’s unscrupulous acting chief, Helen (Huang Yi), and her closest accomplice, Mike (Kent Cheng Juk-si), Gao nonetheless wins over the pair’s in-house enemy Todd Zhang (a grey-haired Lau), a self-proclaimed “world-class equity analyst” who is known for his unbending principles.

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