abubin I do not usually watch HK movies due to it being filled with low quality commercial craps banking on famous celebrities.However, I was interested in this movie after seeing Barbie Hsu getting a nomination as Best Actress in HK film awards and knowing that it is based on Hollywood version "Cellular". I knew, I have to watch it.To my expectation, this movie did not disappoint. The directing and acting is pretty solid and Barbie Hsu does deserve the nomination. This one have more action than Cellular and to those who can relate to the HK culture of this movie will find this better than Cellular. There are movie subplots in this one than in Cellular which adds up a little more plot holes (or rather cheesy parts) but for the better.I also like the fact that the director decided to go with multilingual where some of the actors are allowed to speak their native tongue of Mandarin as to doing voice-over of Cantonese. It made the whole movie much more believable and watchable. The only part I really dislike is the voice-over for Louis Koo which was badly done and clearly is not his voice.Overall, this is one of the better movie I have watched from HongKong for a long long time. I cannot remember watching any action movie as good as this that does not sacrifice good acting and storyline.

webmaster-3017 Tagline: 2008 HK Cinema finally delivers… Review by Neo: Having not review a single movie for almost half a year, it is also about time that 2008 Hong Kong cinema, finally come up with something worthy of my time. Perhaps it all came at the right timing, with the end of my 1st CA exam out of the way, it is time for a little break. Watching Connected is like a rare occasion where one can truly enjoy themselves, involve into it and somehow ending up liking it as well. Let's ignore the fact that this flick is a direct carbon copy of a rare moment of creative script writing from Hollywood (Cellular, starring Jason Stratham). Perhaps, adding to the reason why the current reviewer enjoyed this flick more than he should, must be attributed to the fact that he never seen the original. Still, Connected works extremely well as a stand alone film and if Hong Kong is running out of ideas, which is certainly the case, 98% of the time, a welcome legal copying is not entirely a bad move.It goes without question that the film contains frequent product placement, but seriously, who cares, this is a piece of commerical film-making. I would be worried when a Benny Chan film comes with no Pepsi cans, no Tissot watches and Motorola phones. That would probably mean nobody watches HK films anymore. Take any James Bond movie and the amount of product placement by far exceed any commercial HK films. As long as it is not over done like 2007's Brothers, it is nothing more than a minor distraction. Not with holding, Connected is a well-produced, stylishly and commerically directed, capitalising on a creative piece of script writing and doing what 90% of Hong Kong movies can't do, by ending with film with an attachment with the audience.There is absolutely no reason to be negative about Connected, but then again, I might be the only one that actually liked it from start to finish. There is something about this film that kept be glued to the 40 inches Samsung LCD TV and the amazingly cosy sofa. Maybe, it is Liu Ye, cartoonish menacing performance, the sympathy gained with the constantly crying cute-eyed angel (Barbie Hsu) or perhaps the now acquired taste of Louis Koo's immensely likable over-acting (last scene in the excellent family/triad drama, Run Papa Run). Not to forget, the reinvented Nick Cheung, who has now become more than a handful of an actor, whenever he departs from chatting up Wong Jing. So what's wrong with Connected, well the answer, is that there is nothing wrong, and it is probably as good as it gets, after adding some weight to the current state of HK cinema.It is strange that the first and last movie, I reviewed are both associated with the Dark Chocolate, but one must admit that his over the top style of acting is of acquired taste. While it was used to emotional and humorous effect in Run Papa Run, here, it is more like allowing the audience to relate to him and the feeling of an accidental hero. There are times, when he breezes through the streets like a maniac crashing cars, people, buildings, concrete, stones and mountains along the way, but it is those little moments that all adds up to why the audience will end up relating to the man, Louis Koo.Now, it is time to move on to Taiwanese actress, Barbie Hsu or otherwise known as F4's squeezing teddy bear. It is without doubt that Neo always have a soft spot for cute looking chicks and luckily Barbie provided this and while, she doesn't entirely convince in opening stages. Luckily she manages to improve and settle into her role and eased into a fitting display by the time the credits is rolling. Next up is a glorified cameo from part time Wong Jing's best buddy and part time serious Johnnie To addict in Nick Cheung. Neo knows that Cheung has talent and it is no surprise that he somehow manages to steal his limited screen time, and managed to do more than given within the script. While not award winning, but certainly better than adequate. This leads to the best actor in terms of awards and acclamation in Liu Ye. Liu is a character actor and while he may seem wasted as a cartoonly villainous son of a bitch. Liu manages to outshine most of his co-stars, but somehow still ending up the most lacking. At the end, Liu Ye is a great talent, but sometimes, one must wonder whether this lad would be better suited in period dramas.All in all, Connected deserved its relatively successful box office run of HK$13 million. While many may be inclined to give Benny Chan the credit for creating such an entertaining piece of action/thriller, due to its carbon copying style or perhaps the over-drought of product placement. It is obvious that Connected is the kind of movie where you either believe in storyline and go with the flow and endure through the extreme and the predictability or quite simply just diss it as a stupid movie and end up just having half the fun. Honestly, I had a lot of fun watching this flick and the good thing is that I somehow got involved by it and somewhat emotionally embraced it by the time the credits appear with all those Motorola phones. Love it or hate it, or quite simply just call it stupid, Neo thought the idea and premises is smart and the result is a very satisfying movie experience… (Neo 2008) I rate it 9/10www.thehkneo.com

helmutty I have seen both the original and remake. It is based on Cellular. Cellular is intense and has lots of suspense. After a few years, it is remade by Chinese action director Benny Chan. His recent work, Invisible Target is quite good. Benny Chan cannot fail with fast-paced action mixed with martial arts. Connected is almost like the original, it is intense and has lots of suspense with some twists. Though, the remake is almost like the original, it is not boring. Its suspense is different from the original. I treat the original and remake differently. Both of them are of the same score.Te story: A debt collector receives a call from a woman who is kidnapped by an unknown gang. He thinks it is a joke but soon, he realises that it is not a prank. He hands the phone over to a cop. By then, no one answers and the cop asks him to go to a police station nearby. He rushes off and try to save her and her daughter. The question is whether he can break his promise to his son and save the woman he does not know. From there, there are chaos and intense action exploding into your way. It is another of Benny Chan's good work.Overall: If you are a fan of Benny Chan, this should not be missed. It also should not be missed for action and suspense fans. We can expect there will be more Asian remakes of Hollywood version.DVD: I would like to get hold of the 2-disc special edition (Hong Kong version). Singapore only gets the 1 disc edition. There are English and Chinese subtitles.

DICK STEEL 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.