Movie Review: Overheard 3/竊聽風雲3

I really enjoyed Overheard. It was an interesting story that was well-told. I can’t be so generous about Overheard 2.

The scrīpt and the plot contrivances turned me off, even though there were some good performances.

But obviously it did well enough to carry the franchise forward.

Overheard 3/竊聽風雲3 opens with footage made to look like old black and white film.

And a close-up of a baby’s penis.

Believe it or not, it makes sense in the context of the story; the idea of male inheritance becomes very important to the plot.

Overheard 3/竊聽風雲3 tells a story based in a very current and real-life conflict in the New Territories that centers around the tensions between property development and village life.

Daniel Wu plays a paroled cyber criminal with an exhaustive knowledge of computers.

Lau Ching Wan and Koo Tin Lok are part of a group of friends who have made a lot of money, both legally and otherwise.

Alex Fong, Gordon Lam Ka Tung, and Dominic Lam play the others in the group, and their chemistry is very entertaining.

The five friends (and others) are dressed in very strange outfits, and Alex Fong (the old one) wears a very bizarre wig.

This is apparently the filmmakers attempt to portray people who live in villages, or maybe the NT, as backwards hicks who don’t know any better.

Hey! I live in the New Territories!

Zhao Xun plays Moon, a woman who works all kinds of odd jobs (some of them are really odd) and manages, in the face of several pretty huge burdens, to keep up a remarkably optimistic attitude.

I thought she did a good job with the role, and she speaks Cantonese a lot better than I thought she could.

Or they found someone who speaks Cantonese and sounds just like her.

But I doubt it.

I’m glad that they left her character conspicuously un-glamorous.

You ever notice when an actress wakes up in a scene and her makeup is already done? I hate that.

Well, that doesn’t happen here.

Moon is pretty, in the most natural kind of way, and it was nice to see.

I don’t want to talk about the plot, because I don’t want to spoil it.

I also thought the plot was unnecessarily convoluted, and frankly it got slightly confusing.

And no, I wasn’t drinking cough syrup! I was just confused.

But I knew that it would all work out in the end, so I didn’t really try too hard to figure it out.

I get the impression that maybe the writers didn’t try too hard either. Which is sad, because the writers are Alan Mak and Felix Chong.

It felt like they tried too hard to be complex, and it just became tedious. Who is he? Who is she?

Who gives a sh*t?

Speaking of tedious, the climactic scene was also unnecessarily involved and overblown.

Put it this way; when your action drama reminds me of Donnie Yen’sMonkey King , something’s wrong.

Hong Kong still seems to be working out how to make blockbusters. Too often, it seems like the people who make these movies feel like they have to use all the budget.

Maybe even use it all at once.

So there were a lot of things I didn’t care for in Overheard 3/竊聽風雲3.

But to be fair, there were a lot of things I did like.

There were quite a few good laughs in the movie, and I really appreciated them.

I really enjoyed the way the movie was framed around a very real and topical issue.

I liked that the movie was set in a very non-urban part of Hong Kong that I am vaguely familiar with.

A lot of the acting was really good and convincing.

One particular fight was really well done, and I was impressed by how brutal and realistic it looked.

I enjoyed the epilogue. It may have been a little sappy, but I liked it.

I was probably just jealous.

This movie could have been a lot better.

But in other ways, it was good enough.