How Andy Lau played Hong Kong’s most corrupt cop in The Godfather-like crime epic Lee Rock

Lee Rock, Lawrence Lau’s two-part Hollywood-style biopic of infamous policeman Lui Lok, painted a vivid picture of 1960s Hong Kong

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Andy Lau in a still from Lee Rock, Lawrence Lau’s 1991 biography of Hong Kong cop Lui Lok that paid homage to Francis Ford Coppola’s classic gangster movie The Godfather.

Published: 12:15pm, 20 Jul 2025

Lawrence Ah Mon, sometimes known as Lawrence Lau Kwok-cheung, was one of the second group of Hong Kong New Wave directors who made their mark in the late 1980s.

Lau, who cut his teeth at Hong Kong broadcasting company RTHK, made his name with two documentary-style social realist dramas: 1988’s Gangs and 1990’s Queen of Temple Street – still one of the city’s finest films.

But his follow-up, the two-part Lee Rock, was something entirely different: a four-hour-long Godfather-like crime epic divided into two films.

Halfway through shooting, Lau and producers Wong Jing and Jimmy Heung Wah-sing decided that rather than cut the story down to two hours – which was still 30 minutes longer than the 90 minutes mandated by cinema owners at the time – they would release two films weeks apart.

Both Lee Rock: The $500,000,000 Detective and Lee Rock 2: Father and Son were big hits, taking a combined HK$53 million.

Lee Rock is loosely based on the life of the notorious Lui Lok – here renamed Lee Rock and played by Andy Lau Tak-wah – who is widely regarded as the most corrupt policeman in Hong Kong history.

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