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 s a solo filmmaker, Johnnie To continues to be one
of the few Hong Kong directors to regularly offer up an intriguing
product. His latest is 2004's "Breaking News", about a gang of
Mainland Chinese robbers and the Hong Kong cops hot on their tail. And oh
yeah, some hungry piranhas (aka the news media) shows up to make things
even more complicated.
"Breaking News" opens with a bang, as a
squad of detectives led by Nick Cheung ("Shiver")
find themselves tracking Richie Ren's brood of criminals through the city.
Things turn bad when a minor traffic stop turns Cheung's covert operation
into a conflagration in the streets, with the cops and robbers, both armed
to the teeth, throwing down on each other. The result is a hellacious gun
battle that leaves people from both sides dead and the cops' reputation
tarnished when their failure is plastered on the news.
Enter bureaucrat Simon Yam (in a brief cameo), who
orders the department's public relations to get busy salvaging the police
force's reputation. He turns to Kelly Chen ("Infernal
Affairs 3"), a go-getter who knows a thing or two about spinning
the news and pissing off every single one of her male colleagues in the
process. After Cheung's group tracks the robbers to an apartment building,
Chen takes over, running the police operation like it's a movie. But
Cheung is persistent, and refuses to abandon the charge into the building,
where Ren's remaining crew has taken over an apartment belonging to a
cowardly Suet Lam and his two children.
Running at 90 minutes, "Breaking News"
barrels through its story at breakneck speed. As Cheung and his men roam
the labyrinth-like and extremely tight corridors of the apartment
building, Chen works over the hungry mob of news media in the streets. It
isn't long before Ren realizes he's being played, and turns the tables on
Chen by getting his own version of events out to the general public using
the Internet. This leads to a strange relationship between the two that's
a little farfetched, especially since Chen responds almost immediately to
the charming robber.
"Breaking News" is probably one of Johnnie To's most action-packed movies since 1999's "The
Mission". As with all of To's films, there's style to burn,
including an impressive single long take during the street gun battle. Not
content to just orchestrate the sequence with a single take, To moves the
camera horizontally and vertically, turning what should have been a
chaotic shootout into something poetic and very coherent. It's the best
choreography of a gunfight since To's mall lobby shootout in "The
Mission".
It's only when "News" tries to make its
points about the news-starved media that the movie falters. For instance,
when Chen's PR people delivers a bogus story to the media, and Ren
counters with the truth, the entire sequence comes across as having taken
place in a matter of minutes rather than the tens of minutes (or even
hours) that's required for all the sending and receiving between the
various parties. The film lacks a certain degree of subtlety when it comes
to its media-centered subplots, not to mention breaking more than one rule
of space-time.
But as a purely Johnnie To crime film, "Breaking
News" delivers in spades. The action with Cheung in the
claustrophobic confines of the apartment building is raw and intense, with
Cheung giving a dead-on performance as a fanatically persistent cop. On
the opposite side is Richie Ren ("Silverhawk"),
still maintaining some of the smartass personality he's honed in all those
cheesy Hong Kong comedies. Ren is a laid back thief, just as easily prone
to gunning down a string of cops as he is to cooking dinner for his
hostages.
It's also nice to see Shiu Hung Hui finally playing a
cop your average Hong Kong citizen can respect, and not the bumbling
bureaucrat he's mostly relegated to in movies like "Running
Out of Time". In "Breaking News" the testosterone runs
hard and fast, and Kelly Chen's abrasive, cold fish character is
completely predictable. Like most women in positions of power in To's
films, Chen proves to be ill equipped to survive in the world of men when
the chips are down. It's one of those strange patterns you pick up when
you've followed a filmmaker's career long enough.
"Breaking News" is definitely one of To's
best. An action-packed film from beginning to end, brimming over with
slick camerawork, wild firefights, and the type of understated
"silent men of action" one loves in a Johnnie To movie. My one
complaint? It's unforgivable to have the talents of Simon Yam at hand and
only give the man a minute of screentime. Now that's just wrong.
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