Gordon Lam spent fifteen years at the edge of the frame in Hong Kong crime films, doing less than the men around him and trusting us to notice. Given the lead at last, he does exactly the same thing, and it still works.
Fi1m perspective
In Limbo (2021) Gordon Lam plays Cham Lau heavy and unshaven, a man who hits first and asks nothing afterwards. Lam's method, across thirty years of Hong Kong crime films, has been to stand still while other actors work, weight on one foot, eyes on the wrong person, and to trust that we will start wondering what he knows. It is a supporting player's habit and he has never dropped it.
It took a long time for anyone to look. He came out of TVB's training class in 1988 and spent seven or eight years as an extra and in small television parts before film roles started arriving, in the late 1990s, and those were small too. After he left TVB in 2001 he settled into the work that made his name: supporting parts in the ensembles of Andrew Lau and Johnnie To. He is Inspector B in Infernal Affairs (2002), Kun in Election (2005) and Election 2 (2006), Boss Keung in Exiled (2006). Our review of Infernal Affairs does not single him out, and that is fair to the part. The film belongs to Andy Lau and Tony Leung Chiu-wai, and Lam's job was to be one more face in the room where the danger sat.
The lead came late. A prominent part in Firestorm (2013) moved him to the front, and Trivisa (2016) is the film most often named as the moment he became a leading man; we have not reviewed it. Hand Rolled Cigarette (2020) and Limbo followed. What he does with a lead is what he did with a supporting part, for longer. In Limbo Soi Cheang builds a Hong Kong out of landfill and shoots it in black and white, and Lam sits inside it like something else that has been thrown away. We admired him and we never once warmed to him, which was the point: Cham Lau is not a man the film wants us to like, and Lam declines to sneak in the apology most actors would. Our reservations about Limbo are about what it does to Cya Liu's Wong To for two hours, and our score reflects that, not him.
He also produces, beginning with Gallants (2010), and the films he backs are about ordinary lives rather than triads. He told the South China Morning Post in 2021, "Lam Ka-tung is nothing – to borrow from the Buddhist way of saying." Most actors who say something like that are fishing. Lam appears to mean it: he spent fifteen years being nobody in particular in some of the best crime films Hong Kong made, and learnt that nobody in particular is the hardest part to play. Start with Infernal Affairs and try to find him. Then watch Limbo and see how little he has changed and how much more it costs.
Biography
Gordon Lam Ka-tung (also credited as Lam Ka Tung) is a Hong Kong actor, film producer and screenwriter. Born on 21 September 1967 in Kowloon City, Hong Kong, he graduated from TVB's 15th Artist Training Class in 1988. He spent his early career in minor television roles before gaining notice through an impersonation of Jacky Cheung and a lead part in the 1997 series Time Before Time.
After leaving TVB in 2001, Lam concentrated on film work, appearing in supporting roles in productions directed by Andrew Lau and Johnnie To, including Infernal Affairs (2002) and Infernal Affairs III (2003) as Inspector B, Election (2005) as Kun, Exiled (2006) and Mad Detective (2007). He later took lead roles in Firestorm (2013) and Trivisa (2016), for which he received the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor. He has also produced and written films.
