Connected (2008)

Connected was an emotional thriller from beginning to end. A remake of the US movie, Cellular, Connected put its own spin on the story.

Louis Koo plays an inept debt collector who doesn't spend enough time with his son due to his job. His sister and his son are taking a flight out of Hong Kong and Bob, yes Bob, HAS to be there to send the boy off so as not to disappoint his son one more time. Being a thriller, we already know his trip to the airport is going to have challenges. Barbie Hsu as Grace Wong, throws him the mother of all challenges. She has been kidnapped by unknown villains and managed to use her engineering skills to make a damaged phone work, at least work enough to make a random call. And her one phone call is to timid Bob racing to see his son. Bring in disgraced police officer Detective Fai, played by Nick Cheung and the band is set to find its way together.

Koo connected with his character and managed to show Bob's development from coward to reluctant hero. Cheung's performance sold an otherwise weakly drawn character. Sadly, Hsu had to make the most out of being a damsel in distress, she was brilliant and resourceful, but still in distress and desperate for Bob's help. Liu Ye was able to make the cartoonishly evil Big Bad entertaining. Motorola should have gotten a supporting role as much as the phones had loving closeups.

Connected started and ended strong, the middle had a couple of slow spots, but overall, the pacing and nerve-racking action stayed pretty consistent. As with a lot of movies of this nature there was a great deal of predictability unless it was your first thriller. It didn't take much to connect the dots, thankfully, the trip between each turning point, even when implausible, kept the story moving at least at 3G speed. And along the way Grace and Bob, who were unable to see each other as they talked, managed to connect emotionally as well, a difficult task when both were facing death over and over.

I found Connected to be entertaining with strong performances. My only complaint, other than a few unbelievable bits is that it ran too long. It's worth giving a try, you can always hang up on it if it's not your thing, I kept Grace and Bob on the line until their conversation was over.

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[Written/Watched April 06, 2020 on Letterboxd. Expanded 1/21/2021]

Somehow, Benny Chan's "Connected", a remake of 2004's "Cellular", manages to make the David R. Ellis directed film look like a grounded and restrained action thriller. It certainly gave me a new appreciation of Chris Morgan's screenwriting (particularly his pacing and sense of humor).

As a remake it had every opportunity to really nail a more modern (for 2008) interpretation of an early 2000s film. Instead it goes with a more outlandish interpretation of the villains (that errs on the edge of trying to emulate the aesthetics of "The Matrix"), and even whacker car action. The story just didn't seem to get what made the corrupt cops remotely threatening the 2004 film (it was their mundanity).

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