Movie Review: Overheard 2/竊聽風雲2

Overheard 2/竊聽風雲2is a sequel in name only. It recycles the three actors from the first film but gives them new characters in a new story.

No, it makes no sense to me either.

But don’t worry, the story makes a lot of sense.

Sort of.

What I mean is that its impossible not to understand the story in  Overheard 2/竊聽風雲2, because it is so over-exposed (i.e. too much exposition) that you’d really have to be a kitten with brain damage not to get what’s going on.

I guess the directors are pandering to their intended audience in China, whom they apparently think are dullards.

The story’s telling literally gets in the way. That’s how ponderous it is. They explain everything.

Except for Daniel Wu’s nosebleed. That never seems to get discussed.

I was disappointed. I enjoyed the first film, but this one had so many problems that I just couldn’t get next to it.

First, no disrespect to Singapore, but I doubt their soldiers are trained so well in so many skills that are generally the purview of Special Operations people.

Second, if they wanted Louis Koo to look old, they should have bought a better brand of white shoe polish to randomly daub in his hair. It looked as bad as his teeth in Protege/門徒.

Third, they should have swapped characters for Louis Koo and Lau Ching Wan. They were both playing not so much against type but against their strengths (Kozo Chen gets credit for that observation, but I wanted to include it here).

The film exploits the rising local enmity against ‘hegemonic property owners,’ making the bad guys a cabal of dirty dealers.

As if that hasn’t been Hong Kong’s raison d’etre since its inception.

But lest you think that Chinese people are greedy by nature,  Overheard 2/竊聽風雲2 throws in the odd accusations/insults about America and Barrack Obama, because hey, that China Market C*ck won’t suck itself.

Never mind that the complaints lodged by the characters show a typical ignorance of reality/logic matched by a surfeit (!)  of belief in the veracity of the opinion.

I’m not objecting to the critique of America. I’m objecting to how abjectly pedantic it is.

Which goes for  Overheard 2/竊聽風雲2 as well.