Review of Connected (2008) by Chloe L — 30 Aug 2009

For the uninitiated, Barbie Hsu plays Grace Wong, an engineering genius, worked into the plot such that it would be reasonable for someone of her calibre to craft a makeshift phone from spare parts. Compared to the more elderly version of the damsel-in-distress played by Kim Basinger, Barbie Hsu brings forth a more energetic interpretation.

The remake counterparts held their own in contribution to the movie. While we don't have a Jason Statham as the no-nonsense baddie henchman, we do get a more charismatic Liu Ye as the chief villain, and in spite of hiding his face behind shades most of the time, he does send enough fear to the opposition, and makes quite a fine villain, although not particularly a memorable one.

There are enough material here to have three concurrent narrative points of view running along, with that of the captive, the seeker, and the meddler, where Nick Cheung's off duty cop PC2004 had more to chew on, compared to his Hollywood counterpart.

The action scenes here were a little throwback to the 80s Hong Kong cop shows where heroes and villains get to duke it out in old school fashion in the final act, without police intervention until the show's literally over, but there were a couple of stunts that raised a few eyebrows.

Connected surpasses Cellular in its intensity, frustration, and the leads, while almost never sharing the same scene together, individually made themselves very believable as the damsel-in-distress, and the knight in shining armour.

Benny Chan adds a whole lot of fresh air to his filmography with this effort, even if it's from remake territory and adopting the same way to close the credits, but does an excellent job out of it.