Film Review: Golden Boy 金童 (2025) – Hong Kong
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 7.5/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ 1/2
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There's a moment in “Golden Boy" when Cheung Lek—Louis Cheung's washed-up, newly paroled boxer—looks at his ten-year-old son across a book launch. The kid doesn't know who he is. Cheung doesn't know what to say. And for a beat, the movie stops being a sports drama and becomes something rawer: two strangers staring at the wreckage a father left behind.
That's the film Joe Chan has actually made, hiding inside the familiar shell of a comeback story. And it's worth finding.
Louis Cheung has been a reliable presence in Hong Kong cinema for years, but this is the role that should put him on every casting director's shortlist. He plays Cheung Lek not as a noble fallen hero, but as a man who's spent a decade in prison marinating in his own failures. His face is a roadmap of bad decisions. His body—transformed into something lean and desperate, all visible ribs and clenched fists—tells you he's got nothing left except the one thing he knows how to do. When he steps into the ring, he's not fighting for glory. He's fighting to prove to a kid that his old man isn't a ghost.
The boxing scenes, choreographed by Jack Wong, are brutal in the best way. No Matrix-style slow-motion poetry here. These are short, ugly, bone-on-bone exchanges where every punch lands like a debt coming due. You feel the fatigue. You wince at the body shots. Chan films them in wide, unbroken takes that let you see the geometry of violence—the way two men circle each other, measuring pain tolerance like a currency.
The script, I should note, does not contain a single surprise. The grizzled trainer （played by understated Eric Tsang) who reluctantly takes him back? Present. The training montage set to a swelling score? You bet. The final fight where everything's on the line? Of course. Chan knows he's working with old bricks, and he doesn't pretend otherwise. But here's the thing: old bricks can still build a solid house if you lay them right.
The secret weapon is Leander Lau as the son. Child actors in these movies usually deliver "cute" or "precocious." Lau delivers guarded, wounded, and slowly thawing. The scenes where Cheung teaches him to box in the rooftop aren't sentimental filler—they're the whole point. The ring is just where the feelings finally have nowhere else to hide.
Where does "Golden Boy" stumble? The subplots. There's an inheritance angle involving the boy's late mother that feels like it wandered in from a less interesting film. A few supporting characters - the team boxer (Chu Pak Hong), the dead ex-girlfriend/ mother of son (Ali Lee) are sketched in pencil when they needed ink. And Chan occasionally reaches for tear-jerker moments which actually works that the material hasn't earned—though to his credit, he usually pulls the camera back just before the orchestra swells too loudly.
This isn't "Raging Bull” or “Rocky”. It's not even Nick Cheung award winning turn in “Unbeatable." But it's a workmanlike, deeply felt piece of Hong Kong action-drama that knows exactly what it is and executes it with conviction. Louis Cheung gives a career-best performance. And sometimes, that's enough. Even if you don’t actually win the awards. (Neo, 2026)