Overheard (2009)

Country: Hong Kong SAR

Language: Cantonese / English

Director(s): Alan Mak & Felix Chong

Actors: Lau Ching-Wan, Louis Koo, Daniel Wu, Alex Fong Chung-Sun

Same duo which wrote Infernal Affairs (and by default won the first Oscars for, you know who !!). A crime drama. As the title says the movie is about overhearing. And more than overhearing it is about the human tendency to manipulate the overheard story to his / her advantage.

Commercial Crime Bureau (CCB) probes a company for insider trading, they basically bug the company and do an espionage operation. The lynchpins of the operation from the CCB have their own, the leader of the trio is in love with his boss’s (friend’s) estranged wife, one guy is under pressure having to match up to his rich (to-be) father-in-law, the third suffers from cancer and his infant son is seriously ill and has to settle his family before he goes.

The two boys overhear an insider trading conversation and decide to delete it off the record and take advantage of the circumstances to overcome their financial situation. They invest all their monies (and borrowing) to make a killing but greed overcomes them and in trading is suspended by the Hong Kong Securities for unusual activity. The inspector takes pity on his boys and plays on. Because of not reporting, the incident blows up to gigantic proportions with both their higher-ups in police and the people who are part of the insider trading circuit coming after them. What happens & how is the climax.

Alan Mak & Felix Chong have a great story here and they tell it well, given its shortcomings. The major shortcoming I see is sustaining the speed, the dynamics of a lovely start. The part where they kidnap the inside traders and the subplot there was a bit of a letdown. But that doesn’t take the sheen out of a lovely plot. Lau Ching-Wan, what can one say about this man ? Lovely acting, with a typical poker face (and sometimes playing the joker) he carries the whole weight of the film. All the others have done definite justice to their roles, especially Lois Koo.

Definitely a GoodWatch and a bit more !!