When we hear of remakes, we lament Hollywood raiding Asian content,
repackaging and most of the time dumbing them down for mass
consumption, often to dismal results. Some get A-list cast and crew
attached, while others put whoever's the flavour of the moment to
attempt to be the next scream or drama queen. With Benny Chan's remake
of Hollywood's Cellular, I guess the remake street cuts both ways now,
and while I had enjoyed the original with Chris Evans running around
like a headless chicken, I embrace this version with Louis Koo in the
leading role wholeheartedly as well.
As with any self-respected remake, you take key premise and scenes and
mirror them somewhat accurately, stamping your unique mark on them and
providing some creative spin. But what Benny Chan did in addition to
that, was to throw in lots of space, so much so that it doesn't get
confined to just a particular location, but uses a wide berth which is
Hong Kong, from the highlands to the airport, as the playground of
choice. While it runs longer than the original, you'd suspect that it
either has repetitive scenes, or moments of monotony which would drag
it out, since the original was quite compact with wall-to-wall action.
Connected has none of that, and still maintains enough moments of
thrills and spills, even for those who had watched the original and
likely to guess the twists and turns.
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, Hsu brings forth a more energetic interpretation, not
to mention a younger one too as it provides some background rooting for
a hint at possible romance, since she's a single mom, and Louis Koo's
single dad character, despite them spending the bulk of their screen
time apart from one another. Koo plays Bob, a debt collector whose
relationship with his young son is on the brink of disaster given his
string of broken promises, but gets a call out of the blue requesting
for urgent help.
While Chris Evans may have started off his character quite cock-sure of
himself, Koo's Bob here is pretty much mild mannered and timid, until
such unusual circumstances bring out the tiger in him when he begins to
find some courage to assert himself, in the face of irritants like a
salesman from hell, and a loud mouthed convertible driver. There are
little nuances put into Bob that credit has to go to Louis Koo for
making it more three-dimensional, in having a guy rely on extraordinary
luck to see him through challenge after challenge, of being quite
clueless and one step behind for the most parts, not to mention a
moments of internal tussle he suffers to decide whether to risk it all
for the strange caller, or to ignore the desperate plea for help in
order to save his own relationship with his son.
Apple for apple comparison, 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 (a moniker for the year the
original Cellular was released) 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. An indestructible Nissan March tearing through the streets of
Hong Kong might seem a scene from Mr Nice Guy where a truck full of
Pepsi got ripped through, but one of my personal favourite sequence,
though short, was a full follow through of the characters right into an
unexpected glass panel.
If you've not seen the original, then you might just want to start with
the remake instead. It surpasses 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.