Overheard (Felix Chong/Alan Mak)

[pro-bassoonist]

Felix Chong and Alan Mak's is set to be released in HK shops on September 30th.

YesAsia:
http://www.yesasia.com/global/overhe...0-en/info.html

Ed Lee:

The latest cop thriller by Alan Mak and Felix Chong may be their best film to never become labelled a classic. Overheard isn’t having any of Infernal Affairs’ sense of epic grandeur or inspired revision of genre staples. Instead, here is a character drama so sleek in its plotting that you’d be hard-pressed to find a genuinely frivolous scene before its grandstanding epilogue rolls in. (And can you even lament that? This being a China-approved story, the villain is plot-bound to pay his due.)

Johnny (Lau Ching-wan), Gene (Louis Koo) and Max (Daniel Wu) are best friends working in the Criminal Intelligence Bureau. Respectively facing serious personal problems, Max and Gene resort to make an illegal profit at the stock market by using the insider trading evidence they acquired in a surveillance mission, with Johnny soon joining them in the cover-up. But when a murder plan involving the fraudulent traders is subsequently intercepted, their lives – divided by their effort to conceal from the police force and their conscience to put things right among the deadly criminals – unravel in spectacular fashion.

With producer Derek Yee acting as advisor, Overheard is easily the most morally ambiguous Hong Kong movie to get the thumbs up from the Mainland censors in recent memory. (The big lesson here? Don’t play hero if you’re busy breaking the law in the meantime.) As its three leads all contribute nuanced yet non-flashy performances, the film manages to morph its first half’s spontaneous humour and its final act’s abruptly efficient killings into a consistently engrossing whole. Unlike its famed predecessor, Overheard isn’t going to stand a chance in the pointing-a-gun-at-each-other-without-shooting contest; and it’s all the better for it.

Pro-B