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

3/5 stars\nIt 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.\nThe 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.\nAs 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.\n\n\nCheung 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.\nInterspersed between the dynamic boxing scenes are several relationships imbued with melodramatic passion. This includes his son Fong Yuen (Leander Lau Ho-lam), a bestselling author and child whose philosophising about the human condition is so annoying that it is almost amusing; incidentally, he has a brain tumour.\nDirected by TVB veteran Joe Chan Wai-kwan with a focus on brash humour rather than subtle emotions, the film also provides Cheung with an equally downtrodden coach (a single father played by Eric Tsang Chi-wai) and a potential love interest (a lawyer played by Rosa Maria Velasco).\n\nIt is worth noting that Cheung, once typecast for comedic sidekick roles and mocked for being less popular than his singer wife Kay Tse On-kei, started training for this passion project in 2017 – notably under boxer Rex Tso Sing-yu – and completed filming in 2019. He even put money into post-production to help finish it.\nGolden Boy stayed in limbo for years while Cheung’s career soared: he cemented his acting credentials with an acclaimed leading role in The Narrow Road (2022), a working-class drama set during the pandemic, and proved his box office appeal with hits such as Table for Six (2022) and its 2024 sequel.\nSeeing Golden Boy in the cold light of day, this hot-blooded but generic tale about perseverance works better as a record of Cheung’s sheer determination to reinvent himself than as the artistic breakout that he had hoped it would be. There is no shame in that at all.\n\nWant more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook\n