Daai si gin (Breaking News)

This 2004 Hong Kong flick explores what happens when both sides in a running battle between police and a gang of robbers turn to the media for help. Directed by Johnny To and written by Hing-Ka Chan and Tin-Shing Yip, Breaking News is an exciting, thoughtful drama that combines the massive gun battles made so famous in Police Story and Infernal Affairs (remade as last year’s Oscar winning The Departed) with insightful media manipulation for a very strong result.

The lead roles are Richie Ren as the intelligent villain, Kellie Chen as a police commander who seizes the opportunity presented to her and Nick Cheung as the hero and leader of a detective squad who were after Ren’s gang to start with. A street cop takes offense when one of Ren’s men backs a car intended to take them off for a robbery down a one way street the wrong way and, just as this mistake is almost evaded, the cop says the wrong thing and Ren’s crew open fire; Cheung has many men with him but are only able to take down one of the bad guys.

The rest escape into the post-modern urbanity that is 21st century Hong Kong, huge apartment blocks jammed in on top of each other–To gives us the real city rather than the usual polished and clean cinema fantasy. Working block by block Cheung finds the building in which the gang is hidden, and this is when Chen tells him to back off so she can bring a huge SWAT force to complete the capture. Cheung, of course, is pissed and not interested in stepping off after his men have been the target of gales of weapons fire.

Coincidentally a pair of hit men are on the same floor of the building as the apartment where Ren and one of his men have gone to ground, taking a goofy taxi driver and his two small children hostage. Coming together in the crossfire the four have little choice but to join up. Ren and the slightly older brains of the other pair, Yong Yu, find they have much in common and make a final stand together to get away from the cops. Ren, watching the TV coverage, uses his comic hostage family and the Internet to put his own spin on events each time Chen gives the media a police performance.

They do, but neither Cheung nor Chen have given up the pursuit of Ren (they don’t really known who Yu is, though he gets his own offscreen ending). The climax finds all three leads together for the first time and despite being reasonably predictable, the finish was quite satisfying. I didn’t realize until looking over his CV just now, but this is the second film directed by Johnny To I’ve seen and enjoyed in the last year; I wrote up my thoughts on his Full-time Killer last June.

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