Project Gutenberg - Movie Review

Project Gutenberg is a 2018 Hong Kong-Chinese crime-thriller film, written and directed by Felix Chong, starring Chow Yun-Fat and Aaron Kwok. Almost a year after it hit Chinese theater and grossed a total of $150 million worldwide, Project Gutenberg conquered the 38th Hong Kong Film Awards, winning seven awards including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay. The film revolves around a skillful gang including one of the main characters, Lee Man who created highly-imitated painting and the Hong Kong police is hunting for this gang who led by a prime mover known as Painter. The gang is so expert until the counterfeit currency produced by them is almost impossible to be distinguished with the real money. In order to reveal Painter’s real identity, the police recruit artist Lee Man.

It is not surprising that Project Gutenberg has won the Hong Kong Film Awards, not to mention its all-star production team. The twisty crime drama presents a fascinating look at the operations of a complete home-made version of US dollar counterfeiting syndicate, with considerations of paper texture, ink colour, patterns, watermarks, printing machines and how to determine and acquire all these things. It filmed like a documentary until I was so impressed to look at the operations that look so real and expert. The production setting definitely had led the actors enter to their characters more effectively and authentic.

I think Project Gutenberg is really worth to watch as it has impressed me from different aspects. In terms of cinematography, the director makes use of the colour tone for different scenes to enhance its feeling and bring out the message. The picture below shows a scene where the main character is behind the bars. The colour tone used for this scene is more towards yellow-greenish to create an intense and eager tone of the scene. Moreover, I think the camera angles, transitions and lighting as well are all executed very well in Project Gutenberg. The film used their unique montage in conveying the messages and tiny details by using cinematic background music, slow motion and all these elements connect the intricacies and push the plot to the max. Besides, the flow in Project Gutenberg is just on point and without any cliche.

For the storyline in Project Gutenberg, I really enjoy it and I like how the story plot twisted twice at the end and in a way precisely. The film used a few scenes only to twist the whole story and it is just subverting my mind. There was just a little confusing but I did to figure out the plot finally. Not to mention, it managed to bring me along to recall back to the story again from the very beginning to the end and it is just so make sense. Not only the story line, the most impressing part is the actors’ performance, especially for Chow Yun-fat and Aaron Kwok. Both of them have portrayed their characters so professionally and mostly in-depth emotions. I even got goose bumps watching the film especially at the ending part.

Again, I am so recommend you all to watch Project Gutenberg and perhaps you will find out more interesting part of it!