Connected Review

• 20th Sep 2010

Cine Asia have gone to a lot of trouble to present this 2 disc edition of Bennie Chang’s Connected – a remake of the 2004 US thriller, Cellular, starring William H. Macy and Kim Basinger. The original story by Larry Cohen, the man responsible for Captivity and Phone Booth is what you would expect from the author, delivering thrills and spills in a very tightly enclosed, solitary and claustrophobic manner in which the safety and freedom of others is thrust upon a single character.

It is somewhat refreshing to see Hollywood trumped on its own action of choosing gems from the Far East and dumbing them down into saleable products for the West. This time around, Hong Kong cinema has taken a well thought out, yet high octane roller-coaster ride and instead of making an otherwise thoughtful film into a no-brainer, they have added more soul and depth to the storyline without sacrificing any of the high pace and has produced a superior version of essentially, the same movie.

For people not familiar with the original the story revolves around Grace (played by Barbie Hsu), who is kidnapped by a gang and her only means of help comes from a total stranger (Louis Koo) of whom she manages to contact on his mobile phone. The stranger must decide whether or not to help the damsel in distress in sacrifice of his personal predicament and what follows are a series of twists and turns as the plot unfolds. This raises the awareness of a dutiful police constable who decides to intervene in his own way.

Like any good remake of a film (of which there aren’t many), all of the major points of the story need to be present, although mirrored to the point where the director’s individual stamp is visible, much as you would expect from a good cover version of a song. With Connected, evidence of this is apparent in the cultural behaviours of the central characters compared to those in Cellular. In the US version, the ‘Bob’ character was very sure of himself and was the typical ‘hero’. In this version however, Bob has more humility and is not a confident man, often being one step behind of the kidnappers instead of ahead of the game. This makes Bob’s transformation into becoming the hero much more satisfying. Louis Koo handles this with aplomb and makes his character believable. Barbara Hsu is commendable in her part as Grace without being mind-blowing. The bad guy is also very much what you would expect in any Hong Kong actioner i.e. your typical snarling, quiet type of boss but does deliver a certain amount of malice and threat to the audience and for the purposes of the narrative, delivers what is expected although he is quite different to the Jason Statham character in Cellular.

Action sequences are tight and delivered with power; they remind me of classic Hong Kong action but Benny Chang definitely has the finesse to make this film stand out from others. There are some great sequences and car chases which are sure to make for some satisfying edge of your seat experiences. The score in this film has been handled with care, something that usually lets Asian films down. Humour is also handled very well and at times will translate to a western audience, in particular the scene where Bob purchases a car phone charger kit from a particularly unhelpful clerk.

This release I am reviewing comes with 2 discs and has extensive special features including a whole host of extended, alternate and deleted scenes along with a good array of cast interviews and trailers.

Well, we’ve established that Eastern cinema goers will get tonnes out of this movie and that Connected is superior in quality to the original but will Western audiences appreciate it? I would think that this film will largely go unnoticed in the Western world. Few people actually realise that the movie, Heat is actually a remake of LA Takedown and The Departed is a remake of Infernal Affairs. Both originals made in Hong Kong. If you are the kind of viewer that cares about remakes, or the difference between Western and Eastern styles of action movies, then I strongly recommend that you watch this movie. If you have never seen Cellular before, I recommend you watch Connected first. Again though, it is worth repeating that Hollywood seems to always be put in its place by Asian cinema, even when being played at its own game – doing the remake thing.

Connected is scheduled to be released on 20th September 2010 on DVD

Dan Beadle