Breaking News

Kelly Chen (Infernal Affairs, Infernal Affairs 3) is an incredibly beautiful actress and she can sing, too (Lavender, Lost and Found, Heavenly Music Floating in the Air). Here, she plays a Police Commissioner that has the sense to know that, "if it bleeds, it leads," and makes sure that she manages the press to the advantage of the Hong Kong Police and shows them in the best light possible to convince the residents that they are doing the job.

When a bank is robbed and Inspector Cheung's (Nick Cheung) unit is hot on the trail, the Commissioner thwarts their efforts to get maximum coverage of the police department.

An interesting film, directed by Johnny To, a major Asian director, with robbers who have honor, and massive amounts of shootouts between the cops and robbers.

Nice premise, nice looking but for myself it just doesn't completely fall into place for me.

Probably the most noticeable aspect to "Breaking News" is the cinematography.. No doubt about it, the cinematography of Siu-keung Cheng & editing by David Richardson are first class, but it is also the source of my greatest frustration with this film. For mine the camera moves around too often, too quickly & will come to a holt in a sudden jolt. The opening scene in particular is just nauseating despite the obvious skill in putting it all together.

Well worth checking out & I'm sure that we will see a Hollywood rip-off of this film some time in the next couple of years.

Have I missed something here? From the title I thought this would be a film full of suspense and a story that would engage me but in my opinion it has nothing new to offer. I wonder what director To wanted to express through this film. There have been so many movies made on similar subjects. The only difference is that here To tries to portray the media as more involved in the plot but hardly anything stands out. The pace is very slow. The performances are miserable particularly that of Kelly Chen. Cinematography is alright. Even though the long shot in the beginning is somewhat impressive, it's nothing new. well, maybe for a movie like this, it is but that hardly make the experience of 'Breaking News' worthwhile. Anyway, I don't want to waste my time on commenting about this so I'll just end it by saying that I found it boring.

After a shoot out goes wrong and the police are made to look like fools the brass resolve to catch the bandits while using the media to fix their busted reputation. However things don't go quite as expected for anyone and what was a simple manhunt becomes a hostage situation with all of Hong Kong watching.

This is an odd film. The plot is a bit too complex for its 90 minute running time, with gunfire exploding often when you least expect it. It starts off with a huge shoot out and then changes feels and tones several times as it goes. And there are a couple of moments where I swear I missed some plot point or other, but found I was simply carried along with the momentum and didn't care for long..

It clearly wants to make a commentary on the use of media by organizations to look good, and it mostly succeeds. (I'm also certain that the parallels to how the US Government is doing a similar thing in Iraq was probably unintentional even if it does make you think.)

This is a very good, and very off beat film that moves to its own beat. Definitely worth seeing, especially if you like action.

8 out of 10

Imagine a street scene. Its not a flash street, just a small side street in down town Hong Kong. Something's going down, but we don't really know what - we can see two men in a car, talking in code with people on their radios, as they watch three men. Then all hell breaks loose, the three men are joined by a fourth and they're shooting. Their weapons cause foot long jagged flames, and those bullets sound like they're hitting spots not far from where we are sitting. We realise the two men in the car were policemen (Inspecter Cheung turns out to be one of the main characters), and they're joined by reinforcements. Lots of them. In a Police van, which the four gunmen steal and get away. Until they're stopped by traffic. More policemen. More shooting. Policemen in uniforms are surrendering and being shot dead anyway. Then the four gunmen make a final getaway, by stealing an ambulance, leaving someone stranded on a stretcher.

That's the first seven minutes of this movie. Afterwards, the gunmen hole up in a labyrinthine apartment block while the Police do their best to smoke them out - there is the CID (the good Inspector Cheung and his team half a dozen) and the OCB led by a very ambitious Inspector Rebecca Fong - there are something like a thousand (!) cops deployed in her assault on the building. Then there is the UCD (?), a sinister group, dressed in black body armour and face masks.

But there is more going on in this movie than the bringing of these criminals (and another pair who just happen to have been in the building as well) to justice or the turf wars between Cheung and Fong. The title gives this away - Breaking News. Thanks to the street fight, the media has got hold of the story and the cops are not looking good. So, most of what Fong is doing is playing up her response for the media - sending in 1,000 cops in bus after bus makes for an impressive sight. Then you put webcams on all the cops and select what is going out to the public. Hell, why not put a sexy soundtrack behind scenes of the cops going after their men.

But the crims aren't beyond playing that game too - they've got their own footage, in which they're winning, setting explosions off that are killing more cops. And they're holed up in an apartment with web access. Then, to show they're real people as well, they cook lunch, a really nice lunch it was too, and broadcast images of them sitting down to a joyful meal with their hostages.

Of course, with the kind of manpower the Police are throwing at the crims, you never really expect them to get away. And yet, the two leaders of the two groups get a lot further than you might expect.