20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
How Andy Lau played Hong Kong's most corrupt cop in The Godfather-like crime epic Lee Rock
Lawrence Ah Mon, sometimes known as Lawrence Lau Kwok-cheung, was one of the second group of Hong Kong New Wave directors who made their mark in the late 1980s.
Lau, who cut his teeth at Hong Kong broadcasting company RTHK, made his name with two documentary-style social realist dramas: 1988's Gangs and 1990's Queen of Temple Street – still one of the city's finest films.
But his follow-up, the two-part Lee Rock, was something entirely different: a four-hour-long
Godfather -like crime epic divided into two films.
Halfway through shooting, Lau and producers
Wong Jing and Jimmy Heung Wah-sing decided that rather than cut the story down to two hours – which was still 30 minutes longer than the 90 minutes mandated by cinema owners at the time – they would release two films weeks apart.
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Both Lee Rock: The $500,000,000 Detective and Lee Rock 2: Father and Son were big hits, taking a combined HK$53 million.
