Dubbed the first Chinese remake of a Hollywood blockbuster, Connected (保持通話) takes its story from David R. Ellis’ Cellular, and was shot by Hong Kong’s foremost action flick director, Benny Chan (陳木勝).
With a top-notch cast led by Nick Cheung (張家輝), Louis Koo (古天樂) and Liu Ye (劉燁), Chan proves that movies translated from West to East can be attractive to local audiences brought up on the fine tradition of Hong Kong action cinema.
Fast-paced and dynamic, the film wastes no time in introducing its female protagonist Grace (played by Taiwan’s Barbie Hsu, 徐熙媛). A widowed electronic engineer, and mother to a daughter, Grace finds herself in a car crash, then kidnapped by some gangsters involved in a murder that her younger brother had witnessed and recorded on camera, and locked up in a hut.
Cut to Bob (played by Louis Koo, 古天樂), a single dad who works a dead-end job as a debt collector and can barely keep his family together. On his way to see his son off at the airport, Bob receives a phone call from Grace, who drew on her engineering know-how managed to put a smashed phone back together but could only dial a random number.
Believing Grace and her family are in mortal danger, Bob takes the information to the police only to be told the call was as a phone prank. He then takes matters into his own hands.
Enter detective Fai (played by Cheung), a former rising star of the force who fell from grace and was demoted, who launches a one-man investigation.
The Hollywood transplant has been renovated in a quintessentially Hong Kong style. The elements are all there: well-executed fight choreography; adrenalin-stimulating car chase sequences; the timeworn plot of good guys versus corrupt cops; and of course, a dash of Hong Kong-esque humor. The film’s production values are unquestionably high and slick, exemplified in the scene where a crane shot swoops down on Koo who is trapped in a car that dangles on the edge of a cliff.
Though not without a few far-fetched plot devices, the action thriller coaxes viewers to suspend disbelief with a bevy of characters that have well-developed motivations and personalities. Liu makes a charming and slightly psychotic villain. Cheung, a favorite supporting actor in Hong Kong, shines as a family-man police officer who clings to virtues that no longer apply to the contemporary world. Koo turns in a convincing performance as an unlikely hero who struggles to be a good father and helps to soften the film’s hard edge with a father-and-son subplot drama.
As with most action movies in which the female lead serves as an eye-pleasing prop, Hsu is easily overlooked amid the strong male cast. Apparently, the star needed more practice and training to master her craft than her costars. Perhaps she should seriously consider shedding the pretty-faced pop idol look next time she plays a character who is kidnapped and tortured.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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