Overheard 2 (7/10)

I have never seen the original movie. I've only got to know what this movie was about from the inflight entertainment and decided to watch it after so many missed opportunities. Also because this was an entirely different and had no continuity issue with the original. 

And I'm glad to say that here's another movie made in Hong Kong that is worth watching, because there are so few of them.

A la the style of Infernal Affairs, this blended the normal police-and-thief-chase with an underground syndicate that had their own beliefs and system. And a few characters were inevitably caught in the middle of it.

Directors and writers Felix Chong and Alan Mak definitely know how to grab the audience's attention and use that to their advantage to weave out this thriller.

This time, using the stock exchange as a background to setting up the plot, the three leads, Daniel Wu, Lau Ching Wan and Louis Koo delivered fantastic performances. They were heavily supported by another group of veteran actors that, if like me you've been watching Hong Kong movies since the late 80's or early 90's, will recognise all these familiar faces. Throw in a beautiful Michelle Ye and the cast was quite perfect actually.

However, the movie had no choice but to use some boring way of going into flashbacks and have long sequences of conversation as explanation for the audience to keep up. And that got a bit tedious to follow.

Also, there was a scene where Wu's character had to fend off attacks using his motorbike. Now no man or machine realistically is fast enough to pull off what he did onscreen. And I thought that sequence was totally unnecessary and sort of spoiled the movie a little for me.

But overall, this was quite entertaining, thrilling and dramatic; delivering all that it promised. And I will definitely go and catch the original too.