Review | Golden Boy movie review: Louis Cheung anchors hot-blooded yet generic boxing drama

Cheung’s eye-catching central performance is the highlight of Joe Chan’s mildly entertaining drama co-starring Leander Lau and Eric Tsang

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(From left) Eric Tsang, Louis Cheung and Leander Lau in a still from Golden Boy (category IIB, Cantonese), a new Hong Kong boxing film directed by Joe Chan.

Published: 6:15am, 21 Nov 2025

3/5 stars

It has been a bizarre few years for Hong Kong cinema, with the Covid-19 pandemic warping its film release schedule and causing long-announced projects to re-emerge like tectonic artefacts from an alternate timeline. Golden Boy is the latest case in point.

The film, a mildly entertaining boxing drama anchored by an eye-catching central performance, was first earmarked to kick-start the then-stuttering career of Louis Cheung Kai-chung years earlier. As it happens, the singer-actor proves more impressive for his physical transformation than his acting prowess here.

As in most respectable boxing films that the city has recently produced – think One Second Champion (2021) and Unbeatable (2013) – Golden Boy features a past-his-prime boxer who finds redemption in the ring against much younger opponents, partly for the child that somehow ends up in his care.

Cheung plays Cheung Lek, a professional boxer released after a decade in prison for manslaughter. The film chronicles his efforts to rebuild his life after discovering that he has a 10-year-old son he has never met, and an inheritance to be claimed from his late girlfriend if he agrees to care for the boy.

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