Infernal Affairs meets Wall Street as the original cast and writer/directors Alan Mak and Felix Chong (The Lost Bladesman) reunite for a new, unconnected story…

Keeping the core themes of Overheard, surveillance within a financial setting, writer/directors Alan Mak and Felix Chong (Infernal Affairs, Confessions Of Pain, The Lost Bladesman) reunite the core cast of Lau Ching-wan (Mad Detective, The Longest Nite, Running Out of Time, Full Alert), Louis Koo (A Chinese Ghost Story, Election, Accident, Connected) and Daniel Wu (Shinjuku Incident, Divergence, Protege, Purple Storm) for a completely new story.

(Maybe it should have been called Overheard Again? Or Overheard As Well?)

Lau Ching-wan plays Mansun Wong, a successful stockbroker who works for a shadowy syndicate, the Landlord Club, to handle their portfolio. Well aware that the money comes from questionable sources, he prefers not to ask questions and get on with his job. What he doesn’t realise is that every move he makes is being monitored and surveyed by the mysterious Joe (Daniel Wu).

Mansun takes his orders from Tony (in a magnificent performance from Kenneth Tsang, A Better Tomorrow II, The Killer, The Touch) only via satellite phone away from his office. On his way to receive such a call, he realises he is being followed but while managing to dodge his tail manages to end up in an accident with a truck.

When police also pull a sophisticated military surveillance bug from the wreckage Inspector Jack Ho (Louis Koo) of the Security Bureau is called in to investigate. Though Jack suspects that Mansun may be involved in nefarious dealings up to his neck, he still has to track down the eavesdropper who will cause any sort of collateral damage to the public in order to evade capture.

Mak and Chong once again put together an enjoyable thriller full of twists and turns, but engaging, rounded characters who all have there own motivations for their own actions. It goes without saying that even Wu has some very good reasons for wanting revenge on the syndicate, becoming increasingly sympathetic as the film progresses.

The real villains of the piece are the bankers who manipulate the stock markets to their own gain, never caring about the greater consequences to the economy and peoples lives. A fact none too subtly played out as it’s suggested by one character that the secretive cartel where in no small part responsible for the downfall of the Lehman Brothers!

(Once again Hong Kong filmmaking proves it can take a mundane subject matter like the global economic crisis and turn it into an entertaining movie!)

The script allows the cast to shine, with Louis Koo once again proves his versatility as an actor playing a believably older, seasoned cop. There’s a nod to the great influence of Le Samouraï (particularly on John Woo), which turns out to be Joe and his families favourite movie, with plenty of conversations about Alain Delon.

Effectively building the tension as Inspector Jack tries to track down his suspect, there’s a few great action scenes tossed in that support the story, rather than divert from it, particularly one scene that sees Joe thrown about in a motorcycle chase. It’s only at the final hurdle that the film comes undone – no matter how hard you try, no one can make dealing on the stock exchange seem exciting, not even great HK filmmakers! And the resolution lacks the drama that makes the rest of the film so successful.

But if the ending falls a little flat, this is still another great movie from Mak and Chong, and I’m looking forward to the next…

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This entry was published by Andy H on Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 at 9:00 am and is filed under Action / Thrillers, Films, Hong Kong, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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