The Counterfeiter (2018)

The Hong Kong police are hunting a counterfeiting gang led by a mastermind code-named "Painter". In order to crack the true identity of him, the police recruits gang member Lee Man to unmask "Painter's" secret identity.

Director:

Felix Chong

Writer:

Felix Chong

Stars:

Yun-Fat Chow, Aaron Kwok, Jingchu Zhang

23 wins & 22 nominations.

Cast

Credited cast:
Yun-Fat Chow	...	Painter
Aaron Kwok	...	Lee Man
Jingchu Zhang	...	Yuen Man
Catherine Chau	...	Inspector Ho
Joyce Wenjuan Feng	...	Sau Ching
David Yao-Qing Wang	...	Lee Wing Chit
Kai Chi Liu	...	Uncle Shing
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Chung-chi Cheung
Justin Cheung
Alex Fong	...	Captain Ho
Jack Kao	...	Thai General
Dmitry Mazur	...	Auction Bidder
Phillip Mitchell	...	Superintendent
Jakob Nagy	...	(as Jason Moehring)
Carl Ng	...	Lok Man

Storyline

The Hong Kong police are hunting a counterfeiting gang led by a mastermind code-named "Painter". In order to crack the true identity of him, the police recruits gang member Lee Man to unmask "Painter's" secret identity.

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Plot Keywords:

counterfeit money | police | arrest | painting | fake banknote | 

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Genres:

Action | Crime | Mystery | Thriller

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Details

Country:

China Hong Kong

Language:

Cantonese English Thai Polish Mandarin

Release Date:

5 October 2018 (USA)

Also Known As:

Project Gutenberg

Filming Locations:

Hong Kong

Box Office

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$188,116,796

Company Credits

Production Co:

Bona Film Group, Emperor Multimedia Group (EMG), Pop Movies

Technical Specs

Runtime:

130 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital D-Cinema 48kHz 5.1 Dolby Atmos DTS (DTS: X)

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

[All trivia items for this title are spoilers.]

User Reviews

A Cinematic Homage to A Better Tomorrow, A Perfect Counterfeit in Non Liner Narrative Style

Project Gutenberg (2018) is clearly a non liner narrative structure film because audiences find that every thing we see after the arrest of the protagonist, counterfeit artist Lee Man (Aaron Kwok) who is extradited from Thailand to Hong Kong police jurisdiction ''counterfeited'' his background story and the mysterious antagonist "Painter" as someone played by the Hong Kong super star Chow Yun-fat.

Every one knows Chow Yun-fat as Mark Lee. And this film actually paid homage to the well known legendary character. However "Painter" 's personality in this film is cruel, bloodless and more close to mafia.

Like Rigor Mortis (2013), audiences also realise that the entire story is layered fictional reality which created by the inner character. 'Fictionalised reality within the fictional tale' was consciously dealt by its fictional character itself.

It's typical defamiliarization in narrative structure however the risk is possible disappointment of audiences who want and believe the simple and not layered fictional reality in the simple fictional tale.

Non-linier narrative can create parallel world, a small universe with in narrative structure like In the Mouth of Madness (1994; Dir. John Carpenter).

For instance, the cruiser sequences are repeated twice from different action Lines of HK police and the counterfeit bank notes organisation led by "Painter". This is a surrealistic intercut rather than cross cutting in liner narrative films.

For editorial aspect, the uniqueness of ''montage sequence'' is that its aesthetics is more affected by photoshop-like layer concepts. We can see characters shapes are turned into layers in mono colour, and dissolve into the next land scape layer which appears from the cropped shapes of characters.

When Lee Man (Aaron Kwok) travels through Europe, Asia, North America with his counterfeit colleagues to seek perfect counterfeit technology to imitate the new US dollars in 1996, this kind of montage sequences appear.

Besides this, the fake explosion scene in the testimony of Lee Man (Aaron Kwok) especially represents the aesthetic nature of the entire film.

This methodologically deceptive solution fits the theme ''counterfeit''. In which Lee Man's testimony about the upcoming violence from ''The Painter"ends up with '' imaginal explosion'', after that film reverses the time to back to ''reality'' from this imagination.

The director Felix Chong throughly did his research on counterfeit bank notes and purchased a 7-ton real currency press, which cost HK$100,000, which was able to create realistic looking counterfeit currency, which had to be reported to the Monetary Authority. The art director Alan Mak should be mentioned due to his huge contributions to this film.

You can not find more realistic counterfeit banknotes film in the past decades. Moreover, this counterfeit film's methodological solutions and its non liner narrative structure fit the nature of its theme ''counterfeit''. This artistic achievement should be complemented.

This film explores fictional reality and its fictional universe with in a fictional film. The content and form are perfectly unified in to ''counterfeit'' structure and its ''counterfeit''stories. This is one of successful Asian film cooperation among Mainland China, Hong Kong and Thailand. The quality is only getting better.