Breaking News

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

"Breaking News (Dai si gein)" is one of the most urban crime thrillers I've ever seen, using the density and verticality of a modern city as an intense frame for the fast-paced action.

Hong Kong here seems to have visually become like the futuristic cities with satellite cameras of "Blade Runner" and "Code 46," with almost all the action taking place with 360 degree views of narrow streets, crowded plazas, dark hallways and elevator shafts. There's a door-to-door attack in a corridor that throws down the now classic scene from "Oldboy" as so much balletic nonsense compared to this gritty but very beautiful realism, with cinematography by Siu-keung Cheng.

Director Johnny To grabs our attention in the enthralling opening scene of a shoot-out on a Hong Kong street. With almost no dialog we can figure out that this is a stake-out going horribly wrong. While the scene dizzyingly must have been shot on a cherry-picker zooming up and down and around as if we are on on external elevator or hanging from windows with a zoom telephoto lens, the angles are always important as the camera swoops and narrows and broadens our view from shooter to victim to shooter to victim as we swivel to where the shots are heard. I felt like I was in the antenna of the aliens in "War of the Worlds." The visuals are always directly related to the sounds, as edited by David M. Richardson.

Though I could only infer some of the internal politics within the police bureaucracy with the significance of some using English names and others traditional Chinese names amidst the various competing levels of authority, some of whom spoke stilted English, it was easy enough to pick up on the techie criminalist statistician vs. the on the ground street cop (a terrific Nick Cheung, who is like a thinking cop's Bruce Willis), let alone the difficulties a woman cop (Kelly Chen) has on the force. Her need to prove herself and her modern approach is a driving theme in the film and gives it considerable difference from a more conventional crime drama. She may be a neophyte at being in charge, but she is not an idiot.

There are parallel old school/new school, gangsters vs. assassins with different rules and technology that get caught up in the siege though I wasn't sure of the details of all their intersecting plots. The criminals are considerably more charismatic than all the cops except "Inspector Cheung", and have a sense of humor during an amusing hostage taking.

The instant, real-time new and old media attention in what is as much a door-to-door war between cops and criminals as in "Black Hawk Down" becomes part of their battle plans. It is as violent as a Paul Schrader or Martin Scorcese film, but has the mordant cynicism and humor of Billy Wilder, as the violence mocks the continued blandishments we see from the government officials about the falling crime rate.

While script writers Hing-Ka Chan and Tin-Shing Yip may have intended the high tech PR-controlling official to be a satire like "Wag the Dog" in having controlling the press be an essential component of controlling crime, it is just a very small step beyond the NYC Police Department techniques innovated under former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. So it's a running gag that a kid with access to the Web can outwit their media manipulations. Survival seems to be based more on the results of the battle for public opinion.

I wasn't sure if the Hong Kong police force always looks like storm troopers or if the production design was making a political point. Clearly there was some point to the hostages being surrounded by commercial symbols of Western capitalism and culture.

The music by Ben Cheung and Chi Wing Chung supports the tension very effectively, including electronica and traditional instrumentation.

Unfortunately, the film as distributed in theaters in the U.S. had the worst subtitles I have ever seen. Not only are they filled with spelling and quizzical grammatical errors, as well as frequently white on white, they seem to have been translated using an antique English dictionary. The most egregious distraction is constantly calling these bloody murderers the charming appellation of "bandits" -- how about thugs or gangsters or criminals or crooks or bad asses, and so forth. Why didn't a native English speaker look over these subtitles? At least the credits were mostly bi-lingual.

When a gang escapes from the police and some reporters get the whole incident on tape there is an outcry towards the competence of the police force. Looking for a chance to redeem themselves the police once again track down the gang in an apartment building and stage a real-TV type of event with hundreds of cameras to show the city of Hong Kong that they can do their job properly. Things get interesting when the crooks fire back with their own video of the incident and it is also revealed that there is not one gang in the building, but two.

From the opening 7 or so minute scene that has no cuts and culminates in a shootout to the unpredictability of the rest of the movie this is film that really grabs your attention as if itself were a piece of "breaking news." Interesting is the fact that the "breaking news" almost breaks the reputation of the police. The ability of the media to get information literally everywhere in the blink of an eye is given an interesting commentary in that it can hurt the police as much as a raging shootout. And how can anyone, in such a hectic and tiresome line of work, be able to do anything correctly or according to some procedure if they have everyone else around them breathing down on their neck? It is possible when your success rate is high, but the moment you fail you are treated with a badgering as this film demonstrates.

All in all, this is more a film about the media then it is about the police. The media are in the background throughout and the cops and crooks are the main characters, but it is the effect of an information hungry media that essentially is the driving force for the events in the film. The film's use of news-like footage is another thing - you want to know and see what is going to happen next, but it is that precise constant peering over the shoulder that hinders the police in doing their job. That makes for an interesting take on the crime-caper genre with the traditional drives like greed and corruption almost totally set aside. 8/10

Not rated (yet at least), but contains R level violence.

BREAKING NEWS is yet another JOHNNY TO film exploring the theme of honour among thieves. Earlier successes included THE MISSION and FULL TIME KILLER; others would certainly come to mind if I were to peruse his filmography but you can do that yourself on www.IMDb.com!

Mr TO and the CREATIVE WRITING TEAM of MILKWAY have a habit of not giving the viewer a lot of information, and letting the visual elements that define cinema take precedence.

The opening sequence is very tightly and cleverly shot and edited, so much so that it is a pleasure to sit back and play it over again.

That first sequence introduces most of the protagonists, at least those who will do battle; the subsequent act introduces the upper levels of policedom, who decide to stage a publicity coup.

The need for more effective policing to ensure the safety of citizens should be paramount, but the woman in charge (KELLY CHEN) is every bit as ruthless as the gunmen in her sights.

Caught in the middle is DETECTIVE CHEUNG, the police officer in charge of the initial, disastrous stakeout that sets the story in motion.

Every one seems to want to save face: the thieves refuse to surrender even when the odds seem insurmountable; DETECTIVE CHEUNG becomes more an avenger or a vigilante than a lawman, and refuses to back down, even when ordered to desist and give over to SDI, while CHEN in the safety of her control vehicle, uses technology and superior firepower to prove her worth to her superiors.

JOHNNY TO and his team must take pride in making films where the viewer must EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED (a superior policier starring the wonderful LAU CHING WAN). BREAKING NEWS is no exception: there are several twists; scenes of quiet humour, which manage to humanize the villains of the piece, and of course, those nice touches that ensure some memorable characterizations.

By the time the credits roll, everything has come together, and the muddle of the various conflicts is resolved, quite eloquently.

I cannot quite fathom the wide variety of music chosen for this film but it all seems to work.

BREAKING NEWS is an entertaining 90 minutes, and certainly does not wear out its welcome. Now that the anamorphically enhanced DVD is out, you can watch it more than once, to savour all its nuances.

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.