Indie Film Journal

CONNECTED - director: Benny Chan, starring: Louis Koo, Barbie Hsu, Nick Cheung

For decades there has been a back-and-forth exchange of creative influences between Hollywood and Hong Kong. John Woo was heavily influenced by Sam Peckinpah, and in turn Woo’s The Killer and Hardboiled helped rewrite the book on how action was presented in Hollywood films. For a long time, this relationship of Hong Kong influencing Hollywood and vice versa was limited primarily to loving homages and unabashed rip-offs, but seldom did it manifest in legitimate remakes. Perhaps the best known example of a remake is Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, which had been made earlier in Hong Kong as Infernal Affairs. The Departed and Infernal Affairs served as a great example of how Hollywood could take an exceptional film from Hong Kong, and do it justice. Now, Hong Kong has taken a not-so-exceptional film, the 2004 action thrill Cellular, and turned it into the much better Connected. (more…)