Eye in the Sky by Yau Nai Hoi (2007)
26 August 2007This Johnnie To Kei Fung produced film starts off very well, with a great story, some great characters and a great setup, but the last act of the film doesn’t work so well, has some lame happenings and kind of ends with a whimper. I usually love Milkyway films, but this was a bit of a letdown to me, that even the high end cast could not hold together.
The follows 2 groups, a Hong Kong police Special Unit, which doesn’t act as a normal police unit, but instead acts as a surveillance unit led by Dog Head (Simon Yam Tat Wah), and a group of thieves led by another surveillance man Shan (Tony Leung Ka Fai). Dog Head (in a fat suit and quite disheveled) is followed by a new recruit who lets join the team, and nicknames Piggy (Kate Tsui Tsz Shan). Shan and his team included Fatty (Lam Suet), Iceman (Berg Ng Ting Yip) and a third (Lai Yiu CHeung) who do well time robberies to steal jewels, and fence them through the wife of Shan’s old master who has been in prison for 17 years. The Special Unit is put on the case to find and follow Fatty and then the team.
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…
Dog Head and Piggy go out on the seach and eventually find Fatty and find where he is staying, and begin total surveillance. And they start to follow the team who is going to do the robbery, right up to the robbery, but they don’t know who SHan is, as they call him the Hollowman behind everything, who runs surveillance for them. Shan realizes something is wrong, and calls it off, and Dog Head and piggy go after him using his cell phone he used to call iceman. They eventually get right up on him, but when a uniformed officer asks him for his ID, Shan shoots him, and Piggy stops pursuit to try and save the dying man and they lose Shan.
THey are put on another case of a kidnapper, and Piggy is watching the phone booth he goes to, and realizes who he is because he lived next door to fatty, but she also sees SHan who has just sold his stolen goods and is leaving for VIetnam with his money, and she gives chase, though he almost is on to her, having seen her when she was tailing Dog Head as the movie opened. Dog Head then comes in to take over the pursuit, but Shan stabs in the throat and he is bleeding heavily. Piggy doesn’t want to leave him, but she continues the pursuit, though she has waited to long and can’t find him in the rain, but the sun comes out and she manages to follow him down to the docks. Dog Head passes out from loss of blood, and is thought dead, but ends up being OK, and informs Piggy she has graduated from a Piggy to a wolf hound.
The surveil Shan and his men, but he realizes something is wrong and is about to run as the OCTB people come in with guns ready, and they get all his men, but Shan runs to the boat, but catches his neck on a hook and slices his throat.
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Not only is the end a let down, but it has so many coincidences, and then having Dog Head lose so much blood, but ending up being just fine was pretty lame too. I mean the whole setup was great, but the ending just didn’t work well, and didn’t at all live up to the film as a whole.
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