Breaking News (2004)

Nice premise, nice looking but for myself it just doesn't completely fall into place for me.

Probably the most noticeable aspect to "Breaking News" is the cinematography.. No doubt about it, the cinematography of Siu-keung Cheng & editing by David Richardson are first class, but it is also the source of my greatest frustration with this film. For mine the camera moves around too often, too quickly & will come to a holt in a sudden jolt. The opening scene in particular is just nauseating despite the obvious skill in putting it all together.

Well worth checking out & I'm sure that we will see a Hollywood rip-off of this film some time in the next couple of years.

Fmovies: Have I missed something here? From the title I thought this would be a film full of suspense and a story that would engage me but in my opinion it has nothing new to offer. I wonder what director To wanted to express through this film. There have been so many movies made on similar subjects. The only difference is that here To tries to portray the media as more involved in the plot but hardly anything stands out. The pace is very slow. The performances are miserable particularly that of Kelly Chen. Cinematography is alright. Even though the long shot in the beginning is somewhat impressive, it's nothing new. well, maybe for a movie like this, it is but that hardly make the experience of 'Breaking News' worthwhile. Anyway, I don't want to waste my time on commenting about this so I'll just end it by saying that I found it boring.

I've seen this movie at the Oldenburg International Fim Festival and I really have to say: It's quite good. The story - Police and its image in the media - is in interesting aspect in todays media world and it is worth to think about this relationship. This movie does right that and criticizes a too close relationship. Besides the story, the movie is a cool action-movie with a totally different style than the average western Hollywood-like action movie. Cool camera-work, nice different-angle shot and other cool stuff. It's just nice to watch. The viewer can see many shootings, but the humor does not come to short, especially the characters are quite funny. A negative aspect might be the usage of the "Bond-effect" (no bullet hits a good guy). But IMHO a cool action movie needs this effect. Otherwise there would be too many characters and there would be no development of these characters. All in All: 8/10, which means: Watch it!

Breaking News fmovies. Imagine a street scene. Its not a flash street, just a small side street in down town Hong Kong. Something's going down, but we don't really know what - we can see two men in a car, talking in code with people on their radios, as they watch three men. Then all hell breaks loose, the three men are joined by a fourth and they're shooting. Their weapons cause foot long jagged flames, and those bullets sound like they're hitting spots not far from where we are sitting. We realise the two men in the car were policemen (Inspecter Cheung turns out to be one of the main characters), and they're joined by reinforcements. Lots of them. In a Police van, which the four gunmen steal and get away. Until they're stopped by traffic. More policemen. More shooting. Policemen in uniforms are surrendering and being shot dead anyway. Then the four gunmen make a final getaway, by stealing an ambulance, leaving someone stranded on a stretcher.

That's the first seven minutes of this movie. Afterwards, the gunmen hole up in a labyrinthine apartment block while the Police do their best to smoke them out - there is the CID (the good Inspector Cheung and his team half a dozen) and the OCB led by a very ambitious Inspector Rebecca Fong - there are something like a thousand (!) cops deployed in her assault on the building. Then there is the UCD (?), a sinister group, dressed in black body armour and face masks.

But there is more going on in this movie than the bringing of these criminals (and another pair who just happen to have been in the building as well) to justice or the turf wars between Cheung and Fong. The title gives this away - Breaking News. Thanks to the street fight, the media has got hold of the story and the cops are not looking good. So, most of what Fong is doing is playing up her response for the media - sending in 1,000 cops in bus after bus makes for an impressive sight. Then you put webcams on all the cops and select what is going out to the public. Hell, why not put a sexy soundtrack behind scenes of the cops going after their men.

But the crims aren't beyond playing that game too - they've got their own footage, in which they're winning, setting explosions off that are killing more cops. And they're holed up in an apartment with web access. Then, to show they're real people as well, they cook lunch, a really nice lunch it was too, and broadcast images of them sitting down to a joyful meal with their hostages.

Of course, with the kind of manpower the Police are throwing at the crims, you never really expect them to get away. And yet, the two leaders of the two groups get a lot further than you might expect.

When a gang escapes from the police and some reporters get the whole incident on tape there is an outcry towards the competence of the police force. Looking for a chance to redeem themselves the police once again track down the gang in an apartment building and stage a real-TV type of event with hundreds of cameras to show the city of Hong Kong that they can do their job properly. Things get interesting when the crooks fire back with their own video of the incident and it is also revealed that there is not one gang in the building, but two.

From the opening 7 or so minute scene that has no cuts and culminates in a shootout to the unpredictability of the rest of the movie this is film that really grabs your attention as if itself were a piece of "breaking news." Interesting is the fact that the "breaking news" almost breaks the reputation of the police. The ability of the media to get information literally everywhere in the blink of an eye is given an interesting commentary in that it can hurt the police as much as a raging shootout. And how can anyone, in such a hectic and tiresome line of work, be able to do anything correctly or according to some procedure if they have everyone else around them breathing down on their neck? It is possible when your success rate is high, but the moment you fail you are treated with a badgering as this film demonstrates.

All in all, this is more a film about the media then it is about the police. The media are in the background throughout and the cops and crooks are the main characters, but it is the effect of an information hungry media that essentially is the driving force for the events in the film. The film's use of news-like footage is another thing - you want to know and see what is going to happen next, but it is that precise constant peering over the shoulder that hinders the police in doing their job. That makes for an interesting take on the crime-caper genre with the traditional drives like greed and corruption almost totally set aside. 8/10

Not rated (yet at least), but contains R level violence.

Wow, is this a tense action-packed film. So much so, that I felt my heart racing throughout the film and I was on the edge of my seat! While I usually HATE action films, this one was something else--an intelligently made action film and one of the few in this genre that I can wholeheartedly recommend! Why it only has an IMDb score of 6.6 is completely beyond me.

Unlike many action films, while there are a lot of explosions and gun fire, there also is an intelligent parallel plot that has to do with the news media and how the government will manage and manipulate the news to best meet their needs. This was brilliant but I was also very surprised, as this film was made in China--a country NOT known for its freedom of expression. Here, the filmmakers have a cynical attitude towards the cops and their occasionally dishonest attempts to manipulate the press. This parallel plot makes this movie far more than just mindless violence, but social commentary. A one-dimensional violent film is a complaint I have with many other action films--but not this one.

The film begins with an undercover surveillance mission by the police. Two uniformed cops blunder into the operation and this results in a massive shootout--and it's obvious that the crooks are far better armed than the police. Eventually, most of the bad guys get free and take refuge in a high-rise apartment--where most of the film takes place.

Despite a very simple plot idea, the film never lets up or becomes just an action feature. Again and again, I was amazed at the intelligence of the writing and intensity of the film without managing to be gratuitously bloody or violent. Yes, this certainly is a violent film, but despite all the shooting and explosions, the body count is amazingly low and it does not look quite as intensely violent some of the John Woo films. Excellent writing, direction and acting make this a must-see film for the genre.

Watch this film...just be sure you DON'T watch it with children or those who are bothered by violent imagery.

PS--I noticed that one reviewer complained about the bad subtitles. While the film I saw didn't have perfect subtitles (there were a few grammatical errors here and there), they were nothing like the ones they described. There were no white captions on white background and I don't recall words like "bandits" being used. I assume there must be another version out there, as I saw the film on the Sundance Channel and it wasn't bad at all. It is also possible I have seen so many badly captioned Asian films that this one looked pretty good to me--and believe me, there are MANY badly captioned Asian films.