Connected
Director Benny Chan (Invisible Target, New Police Story, Divergence) takes on Hollywood in a remake of Cellular – and comes up trumps…!
Bob (Louis Koo, Accident, Flashpoint Robin-B-Hood) is not having a great day. In a dead end job he despises as a debt collector, his sister looks after his son and it looks like once again he’s going to let him down and miss saying goodbye at the airport. Then he receives a mysterious call on his mobile from a terrified woman called Grace Wong (Barbie Hsu, Reign of Assassins, Future X-Cops) who claims to have been kidnapped and be held in an unknown location.
Unsurprisingly Bob doesn’t believe her at first, but she pleads with him not to put the phone down as she may not be able to connect to another number, and soon he starts to see the very real danger this woman and her family are in. Quickly running put of time, and finding that the police refuse to help him, he realises that he is the only one who can save her…
Cellular was always the rather unfortunate sibling of Phone Booth, both written by exploitation writer/director supreme Larry Cohen (Black Caesar, It’s Alive, Q) the former came as he was trying to fund the latter. Of course, Phone Booth ended up getting made first, and it’s said even his friends accused him of writing the same story twice. (Sure, you know what I never saw it either!)
Initially seemingly keeping close to the original, this superb Asian twist by director Benny Chan amplifies the action in a way only Hong Kong can – accentuating the ridiculousness of the situation, but casting very ordinary, clumsy leads in the frame. It pulls heavily on his recent work with Jackie Chan, New Police Story and Robin-B-Hood, to bring comic timing and very real, well orchestrated action scenes – this time particularly car chases – together.
The ever-dexterous Louis Koo is once again sublime, this time playing a stumbling, geeky, wimpy loser who wouldn’t know a kung fu kick to save his life! Bespectacled and stuttering, he brings more than a whiff of Harold Lloyd to the role, constantly way out of his depth, like Lloyd hanging off a skyscraper. Koo picks a fine line between the humour of the role, and the hyper-real peril of the predicament.
Then there’s Nick Cheung (Exiled, Broadcast News, Beast The Beast Stalker), again cast as a tenacious cop who meets Bob quite by chance, and then has his curiosity raised. Cheung Siu-Fai (Murderer, Broadcast News, Mad Detective) is solid support once more for the rest of the cast to play off. And Barbie Hsu, is something of a breakthrough role form TV work, makes quite an impression. And then there’s Lui Ye (City Of Life And Death, The Founding Of A Republic) playing a thoroughly unlikable villain.
Regular collaborator Alan Yuen (Robin-B-Hood, Heroic Duo, New Police Story) worked with Benny Chan on the adaption, and considering that the original starred Chris Evans, star of many a Marvel adaption (Fantastic Four, Captain America) and already lampooning his own hunky appearance in Scott Pilgrim, they seem to take the movie down a far more down-to-earth route. I love the way that no one has (or suddenly develops) amazing martial arts abilities or almost superhuman powers, or is even that great a shot for that matter. (Though Bob is a particularly lucky guy, all considered!!)
Instead, Chan uses pace, good humour, and some amazing car stunts to do his work. And yes, there are some fantastic car stunts – up there with The (original) Italian Job and The Blues Brothers (with a hint of the car through the refugee village scene in Police Story). And there’s an interesting injection of foreign mistrust in the form of some dodgy interpol agents.
Sure, Connected is by no means the most imaginative or clever film to come out of Hong Kong in recent years – Benny Chan can leave that to Johnnie To. But there’s a very good reason why the two play off the same core actors, reliability. With Connected, Chan cements his position as not just one of the best, most consistent directors in Hong Kong, but also one of the best directors of action movies in the world.
Predictable it may be, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun too – and that’s just what HK cinema has always been about! Miss at your peril!
Connected is released on DVD on Monday by Cine Asia.
DVD details
Distributor: Cine Asia (UK)
A particularly superb DVD package from Cine Asia. Great transfer of picture and sound, this also includes over 40 minutes of extended and alternative scenes. (Hell, I didn’t think they shot that much extra footage on a Hong Kong movie?) Most were lost for a good reason, but provide quite an insight in the paring down process of filmmaking. Of particular interest is a scene where Bob tricks other, far more ruthless debt collectors away to save a young mother and her child – great scene, but at such an early point in the movie that it would have made him far too sympathetic!
And there’s lots more: interviews with the director and three main leads (Chan’s is over 20 minutes long!), a fun making of, and plenty of behind the scenes featurettes. For once, this really is an ‘ultimate edition’ and well worth getting hold of!
(Only one drawback: the subs ain’t that great! I mean, what’s with that? Someone couldn’t go through the subtitle track and sense check ‘em?)
