Review by Leonard Norwitz
Studio:
Theatrical: Sirius Pictures International
Blu-ray: Tai Seng Entertainment
Disc:
Region: FREE!
(as verified by the
Momitsu region FREE Blu-ray player)
Runtime: 1:50:34.666
Disc Size: 24,123,949,180 bytes
Feature Size: 23,399,092,224 bytes
Video Bitrate: 20.49 Mbps
Chapters: 18
Case: Standard Blu-ray case
Release date: January 21st, 2009
Video:
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Resolution: 1080p / 24 fps
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video
Audio:
LPCM Audio Chinese 4608 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 4608 kbps /
16-bit
Dolby Digital Audio Chinese 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio Chinese 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps
Dolby Digital Audio Chinese 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps
Subtitles:
English, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Indonesian,
Korean, Mandalay, none
Extras:
• Making of – in SD (26:12)
• Behind the Scene – in SD (38:20)
• Deleted Scenes – in SD (34:31)
• Alternate Scenes – in SD (8:44)
• 4 Trailers for the movie
The Film:
5
Based on the 2004 movie "Cellular" directed by David Ellis
and starring Chris Evans, Kim Basinger, William H. Macy and
Jason Statham, Connected is a scene for scene translation of
the original movie into a Hong Kong context. Differences are
subtle, but telling. The bad guy is more ruthless; the hero,
more conflicted; the kidnapped woman, just as desperate and
about as resourceful (she’s younger than her American
counterpart, keeping the door open for a potential liaison
after the closing credits); the good cop, less colorful (how
could he be otherwise: Nick Cheung vs. William Macy.) Benny
Chan’s movie is more self-conscious about stunts, the
feeling is that if he didn’t have them, there would be no
movie. And there isn’t as much savvy about cell phones in
evidence here (though this might be partly a question of
translation.)
In both films, a mother is kidnapped and brought to a secret
location where she is threatened with harm to her child if
she doesn’t tell where “it” is. She insists she doesn’t know
what these guys want of her, so off they go to the kid’s
school to put the screws on. Meanwhile, our antihero – in
the one case an irresponsible surfer dude, in the other a
reluctant loan collector and irresponsible dad, when,
resourceful woman that she is, the kidnapped victim attempts
to sort out a distress call with pieces of wire and an
abandoned analog phone. The calls she makes are random and
she happens on our antihero, who, driving about in his car,
at first dismisses her pleas for help as a prank, but
eventually comes to believe her story. The challenge and the
thrill of both movies is to make his attempts to locate her
child and her before the kidnappers do what they do best and
while cell phones do what they do worst. The results can be
funny and suspenseful depending on the moment and the
director.
Louis Koo, as a responsible dad in the making, has this
knack for finding a specific tone, face and posture for his
character and sticking with it until the moment of crisis.
He does much the same thing in his more recent film,
Accident, but since that character’s unraveling takes
longer, the technique is more effective. Liu Ye (City of
Life & Death) is scary as hell as the bad guy, but his
character is so one-dimensionally psychopathic we wonder how
he could have risen to his position of authority – on the
other hand, perhaps I’ve just answered my own question.
While not as consistently smart or as funny as the movie
from which it is derived, on its own terms, Connected is not
a bad movie. Its mistakes can be laid squarely at the foot
of the director who seems to feel that more is always
preferred. Not that Cellular is especially subtle, but one
of its better ideas is that Basinger and Evans are far
enough apart in age that in the mind of the audience, Evans’
willingness to help is made that much more altruistic and
not complicated by romantic fantasies, while Chan keeps that
door open. It changes the whole undertone of the movie, and
not for the good. Chan also grants near superhuman powers to
an otherwise harmless hero, he lingers too long on a child
who cries too much and talks too much, he insists the
heroine flee her captors into a gigantic open space. On the
other hand, Chan does have his way with a car chase: there’s
one toward the beginning that is very funny, even if not the
slightest bit plausible. His use of Gong Beibi (Waiting
Alone) as the house-sitter with a gun and a fighting spirit
is a tasty call.
Image:
4/7
NOTE:
The below
Blu-ray
captures were ripped directly from the
Blu-ray
disc.
The first number indicates a relative level of excellence
compared to other Blu-ray video discs on a ten-point scale.
The second number places this image along the full range of
DVD and Blu-ray discs.
The source material seems to be in good condition with few
defects. The image itself is peculiar, nor do I see any good
artistic reason why it should be. It is strongly filtered in
a way that works better for landscapes than people.
Sharpness and detail varies, depending, it seems, on how
much the extra contrast blows out the image as well as how
much DNR is applied which, at times, is quite a bit on some
close-ups. Blacks are generally OK, though shadow detail is
often lost. Occasional halos suggest oversharpening.
CLICK EACH
BLU-RAY
CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION
Audio & Music:
5/7
For an action thriller with stunts left and right it is
surprising how uninvolved the surrounds are, compared to
other movies in the genre. Dialogue, with its smatterings of
English and (from what I gather) both Cantonese and Mandarin
is clear, though brittle. Music is thin. Bass is sometimes
wompish, other times absent, especially in car crashes (very
strange.)
Operations:
5
Subtitles are clean, with only a few English usage errors.
The idea of having the Extra Features on a separate disc is,
at first blush, classy until we realize that the feature
film is presented on a single-layer disc. Thus making the
second disc (a DVD) merely a marketing ploy.
Extras:
6
The half-hour Making-of segment looks at the stunts (a big
part of this movie), casting, character motivation and
concept, touching on Cellular, the American movie from which
it is derived. I should mention that the Making-of piece and
the deleted and alternate scenes are subtitled. That’s a
plus.
Bottom line:
4
Neither the anticipated, but largely unrealized, benefits of
high definition or the story’s transposition into a Chinese
milieu makes for a better experience than watching the
original movie on DVD.
Leonard Norwitz
December 28th, 2009
