0 Connected 2008

When we hear of remakes, we lament Hollywood raiding Asian content,repackaging and most of the time dumbing them down for massconsumption, often to dismal results. Some get A-list cast and crewattached, while others put whoever's the flavour of the moment toattempt to be the next scream or drama queen. With Benny Chan's remakeof Hollywood's Cellular, I guess the remake street cuts both ways now,and while I had enjoyed the original with Chris Evans running aroundlike a headless chicken, I embrace this version with Louis Koo in theleading role wholeheartedly as well.

As with any self-respected remake, you take key premise and scenes andmirror them somewhat accurately, stamping your unique mark on them andproviding some creative spin. But what Benny Chan did in addition tothat, was to throw in lots of space, so much so that it doesn't getconfined to just a particular location, but uses a wide berth which isHong Kong, from the highlands to the airport, as the playground ofchoice. While it runs longer than the original, you'd suspect that iteither has repetitive scenes, or moments of monotony which would dragit out, since the original was quite compact with wall-to-wall action.Connected has none of that, and still maintains enough moments ofthrills and spills, even for those who had watched the original andlikely to guess the twists and turns.

For the uninitiated, Barbie Hsu plays Grace Wong, an engineeringgenius, worked into the plot such that it would be reasonable forsomeone of her calibre to craft a makeshift phone from spare parts.Compared to the more elderly version of the damsel-in-distress playedby Kim Basinger, Hsu brings forth a more energetic interpretation, notto mention a younger one too as it provides some background rooting fora hint at possible romance, since she's a single mom, and Louis Koo'ssingle dad character, despite them spending the bulk of their screentime apart from one another. Koo plays Bob, a debt collector whoserelationship with his young son is on the brink of disaster given hisstring of broken promises, but gets a call out of the blue requestingfor urgent help.

While Chris Evans may have started off his character quite cock-sure ofhimself, Koo's Bob here is pretty much mild mannered and timid, untilsuch unusual circumstances bring out the tiger in him when he begins tofind some courage to assert himself, in the face of irritants like asalesman from hell, and a loud mouthed convertible driver. There arelittle nuances put into Bob that credit has to go to Louis Koo formaking it more three-dimensional, in having a guy rely on extraordinaryluck to see him through challenge after challenge, of being quiteclueless and one step behind for the most parts, not to mention amoments of internal tussle he suffers to decide whether to risk it allfor the strange caller, or to ignore the desperate plea for help inorder to save his own relationship with his son.

Apple for apple comparison, the remake counterparts held their own incontribution to the movie. While we don't have a Jason Statham as theno-nonsense baddie henchman, we do get a more charismatic Liu Ye as thechief villain, and in spite of hiding his face behind shades most ofthe time, he does send enough fear to the opposition, and makes quite afine villain, although not particularly a memorable one. There areenough material here to have three concurrent narrative points of viewrunning along, with that of the captive, the seeker, and the meddler,where NicK cheung's off duty cop PC2004 (a moniker for the year theoriginal Cellular was released) had more to chew on, compared to hisHollywood counterpart.

The action scenes here were a little throwback to the 80s Hong Kong copshows where heroes and villains get to duke it out in old schoolfashion in the final act, without police intervention until the show'sliterally over, but there were a couple of stunts that raised a feweyebrows. An indestructible Nissan March tearing through the streets ofHong Kong might seem a scene from Mr Nice Guy where a truck full ofPepsi got ripped through, but one of my personal favourite sequence,though short, was a full follow through of the characters right into anunexpected glass panel.

If you've not seen the original, then you might just want to start withthe remake instead. It surpasses in its intensity, frustration, and theleads, while almost never sharing the same scene together, individuallymade themselves very believable as the damsel-in-distress, and theknight in shining armour. Benny Chan adds a whole lot of fresh air tohis filmography with this effort, even if it's from remake territoryand adopting the same way to close the credits, but does an excellentjob out of it.

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