Breaking News VCD

Richie Ren is Yuan, a cool Mainland professional thief who sets the Hong Kong streets on fire in the film's first eight minutes - an amazing steadicam sequence that details the beginning of a pitched gunplay battle and its subsequent fallout in a single take. On Yuan's tail is Inspector Cheung (Nick Cheung), a slightly goofy-looking version of the standard "Cop Who Breaks All the Rules™". The cops' stakeout goes bust, leading to a firefight and finally a media-covered sequence of an average beat cop actually raising his hands and surrendering to Yuan and his three comrades. The televised display of cop cowardice sets the public against the police, a sentiment furthered by the fact that Yuan and his gang gets away. The Royal Hong Kong Police Force have likely never had a poorer Q-rating.

Enter Inspector Rebecca Fong (Kelly Chen), who suggests to her superior officers (including Simon Yam in a cameo) that the cops regain face by putting on a "big show". That show will include unprecedented media access to the apprehending of Yuan's gang - once they catch up with them. Fong has her crew scouring the streets for info, which leads them to Yuan's apartment building hideout at nearly the same time as Cheung and his team, who brazenly disobey orders by staying on the case and invading the building. Once Fong gets wind that the planned primetime bust is going down, she assembles the cops and media for her big show, and begins to orchestrate events to make the cops seem like the heroes they're supposed to be. Meanwhile, Yuan catches on to the media manipulation, and starts finding ways to debunk the cops' media spinning. All the while, Cheung stays in the building, and strengthens his personal resolve to bring down Yuan.

Breaking News charges forward like a barrelling freight train, which can be credited to Johnnie To's solid direction, as well as his unparalleled ability to work minor quirks into otherwise generic crime films. Inspector Cheung may be a hard-nosed cop cliché, but his interaction with the frustrated Fong, who wants him off the streets pronto, and his sometimes dopey subordinates (including To regular Hui Siu-Hung as a flatulent cop) is handled efficiently and entertainingly. Similarly, Yuan is revealed to be a suave, honorable thief who frowns on killing kids, and has the charisma to defuse tensions between his gang and the men belonging to Chun (Yao Yong), a Mainland hitman who happens to be caught in the building too. Yuan takes hostages (Lam Suet and his two kids), but treats them extraordinarily well, even cooking dinner for them and delivering footage of their meal to the media to show up the cops.

The satirical element of Breaking News offers some rich ground to cover. The cops are trying to put on a show, but their media machinations are countered by Yuan's intelligence and gamesmanship. Yuan is portrayed as a smart guy who puts his principles first, and is perhaps better at handling the media than the cops are. Indeed, he would probably get away with the whole shebang if it weren't for Cheung's Rambo cop ingenuity, or some minor happenstance involving the ultra-photogenic Inspector Fong, who's seemingly admired by every male cop (and even male thief) within 100 yards of her. Yeah, even though this is a tough thriller/media satire combo, it's all too apparent that there are screenwriters at work. The pointed media satire provides some good narrative fodder, but there are more obvious screenwriting conceits - like the forced attraction between Yuan and Inspector Fong - that seem like remnants of a marketing meeting.

There's also a weird male bonding subplot that goes to an illogical extreme, and seems to exist only to end the film on a self-referential note. Odd existentialism in Hong Kong crime films is nothing new, but their presence in Breaking News only seems to weigh the otherwise sleek narrative down. Screenwriters Chan Hing-Kai, Yip Tin-Shing, and the Milky Way Creative Team (Woohoo! Screenwriting by committee!) spend too much time crossing their thematic wires, and the result is not a film that really seems to say much. The media satire is there, but not fully played out. The male bonding, and existential thoughts of professional criminals are explored, but the ultimate payoff seems forced. And the attraction between Yuan and Fong is too undeveloped and uninteresting to be anything other than movie screenwriting.

Also problematic is the film's casting, which is totally odd for a Johnnie To film. Richie Ren gets the Andy Lau role, and is sufficiently charming and even charismatic as the intelligent thief Yuan. What he doesn't seem to possess is the requisite edge of a killer, which Yuan plainly is from minute one of the film. Nick Cheung fares slightly better as the hard-boiled Cheung, if only because he's not really required to carry the film. Cheung is suitably intense for a light media satire/action thriller like Breaking News, though he would still be all wrong for either the Lau Ching-Wan or Andy Lau roles in Running Out of Time. On the lower end of things is Kelly Chen, who no matter how you slice it, does not look or act like she belongs in this film. Inspector Fong's intensity and intelligence aren't adequately conveyed by Chen, nor does there seem to be much lingering beneath Fong's gorgeous exterior. At the very least, Chen's icy screen persona seems fitting for her character, but that doesn't really make her seem interesting.

But despite all the above gripes, Breaking News does provide one major, major bonus: it entertains, and not in a dumbed-down, unintelligent way. The media satire, while not fully explored, does give the film a few sly laughs, and Johnnie To paces the cat-and-mouse "Die Hard in a Hong Kong apartment building" storyline with enjoyable tension and appropriate bursts of action. Aside from the astounding one-take opening sequence, Breaking News provides a climactic minibus chase also shot in one take, and effective split-screen moments which bring the characters and their situations closer together. Even if marketing botched some aspects of Breaking News, Johnnie To handles the actual storytelling with admirable cinematic panache. It's not a perfect film by any means, but for Hong Kong commercial cinema, Breaking News is still better than we probably deserve.

by Kozo - LoveHKFilm.com

Well, now I've seen Breaking News. I can tell you why I enjoyed it too, but it hasn't supplied me with any principles I can apply to my assessment of To's other films; in fact, Breaking News' success is actually dependent on its exaggeration of the problem - my problem - outlined above, with To so privileging style over narrative substance that the former essentially renders the latter irrelevant. This is, of course, the point; Breaking News is a film all about image and how to sell it using any means possible. In their fight to control public opinion, both the police and the besieged gangsters constantly try to find new means of communicating with their audience in a way that recalls the proliferation of new media in the 'real' world outside the film. Internet web-cams and message boards and mobile phones with built-in video capture capabilities are the primary tools in use here, but even boring old television has its place in this hi-tech mix when the police hire a film director to edit and digitally retouch the 'live' footage they are supplying to the networks.

From reading the synopsis for the film, you might be forgiven for thinking Breaking News is a comedy. It's not. Despite featuring plenty of laughs (mostly in the satirical vein), Breaking News is a police action flick, albeit one that constantly strays outside the boundaries of its generic form. The basic premise for the film is fairly straightforward, but the reason To can use such a predictable cops-and-robbers story to such great effect here is because there is almost no narrative tension generated by the formulaic plot points that unfold on-screen; instead, what matters here is the spin that the police/gangsters put on these events after they have happened. However, this is not to suggest that the film is simply formed out of an uneven combination of scenes 'valuable' and not-so-valuable; rather, Breaking News works as a cohesive whole due to some excellent work by the cast (including To regulars Simon Yam and Lam Suet) and To's stunning direction (the standout scene being the seven-minute single-take gun-battle that opens the film).

An almost total emphasis on style, no matter how deliberate, can only go so far though, and despite (or perhaps because of) Breaking News' effective satirical elements, the film still feels a little hollow. Only a little though - this is a great film and easily one of To's best. As usual, I'm looking forward to whatever he does next, and, also as usual, I'm going to spend the time until its release trying to work out why I like him so much!

9 departmental abbreviations out of 10

by Jonathan McCoy - heroic-cinema.com