Kinoreal
  • Essays
  • Reviews
  • Fantasia
  • Red Brand Studios
  • Français
✕
Love in a Puff
Love in a Puff (Ho-cheung Pang, 2010)
November 28, 2010
Written By
Written By (Wai Ka-fai, 2009)
November 28, 2010

Overheard (Felix Chong and Alan Mak, 2009)

Overheard

Thanks to Love in a Puff, I’m looking forward to Overheard. Since it is a Hong Kong film from Alan Mak, one of the directors of Infernal Affairs, I don’t bother to read the synopsis online before buying my ticket. By the pictures in the Fantasia program, I surmise that it’s a star-studded cat-and-mouse psychological thriller, in the vein of Infernal Affairs.

Tasked with the surveillance of CEOs rumoured to be manipulating the price of their stock for money, three police officers get in over their heads when they overhear inside information and decide to invest in the company for their own benefit. As a fable on greed and corruption, Overheard starts out well enough. It’s possible at every moment for the three officers to stop their unethical actions, but they never do. Plus, we don’t deal here with corrupt cops but tortured men pressed by circumstances and motivated by good intentions. But, as it’s usually the case with corruption, an act leads to another and can overwhelm in the end. What is unrealistic here in Mak and Chong’s fable is the high degree to which the police officers get punished by their circumstance. It is morally simplistic to map out the characters vertiginous descent as abruptly as it’s done in the film. Close to its end, every plot point feels forced, every emotion manufactured.

Overheard, which started as a worthy addition to the genre, with magnificent performances from its lead actors, ends on a melodramatic cop-out in which the filmmakers forgo the story’s more thrilling aspects for their unsatisfying, fabricated morality. A shame, really.

More info on IMDB

  • About
  • Latest Posts
Eric Lafalaise
Follow him
Eric Lafalaise
Head Honcho at Red Brand Studios
Eric Lafalaise mostly communicates by writing and telling stories. He is a contributing writer to the Kinoreal film blog, a producer for Red Brand Studios, an artist, a photographer, a tech freak, and an all-around (left-right) brain nut.
Eric Lafalaise
Follow him
Latest posts by Eric Lafalaise (see all)
  • Black Panther: A Perspective - March 20, 2018
  • Seven Pounds (Gabriele Muccino, 2008) - May 5, 2015
  • Honeymoon (Leigh Janiak, 2014) - January 30, 2015
Share

Related posts

Honeymoon
January 30, 2015

Honeymoon (Leigh Janiak, 2014)


Read more
Live
January 30, 2015

Live (Noboru Iguchi, 2014)


Read more
I'll Give It My All... Tomorrow
January 3, 2014

Fantasia 2013 bits IV


Read more
✕

TOP POSTS

HK: Hentai Kamen (Yûichi Fukuda, 2013)
Symbol (Hitoshi Matsumoto, 2009)
Fantasia 2013 bits II
Blades of Blood (Lee Joon-ik, 2010)

AUTHORS

  • 1 Yves-Marie Exumé
    • On the dopeness of Black Panther
  • 1 Olivier Day
    • Spectre (Sam Mendes, 2015)
  • 1 Eric Lafalaise
    • Black Panther: A Perspective
    • Seven Pounds (Gabriele Muccino, 2008)
    • Honeymoon (Leigh Janiak, 2014)

SIGN UP
FOR OUR
NEWSLETTER

Get notifications of new film posts and reviews!

Subscribe

ABOUT KINOREAL

Kinoreal is a blog on the nature of life in film.

TAGS

Ah-in Yoo Arnold Reyes Brad Pitt Cate Blanchett Chadwick Boseman Chia-Hui Liu Ching Wan Lau Christian Bale Daniel Wu Dong-won Gang Donnie Yen Edgar Ramírez Fumika Shimizu Herman Yau Hun Jang Jennifer Connelly Ji-Hoon Ju Joe Odagiri Johnny To Jung-min Hwang Kate Winslet Keanu Reeves Kátia Lund Louis Koo Lupita Nyong'o Michael B. Jordan Paulo José Philip Seymour Hoffman Russell Crowe Ryan Coogler Ryôhei Suzuki Sam Mendes Satoshi Miki Sean Penn Sion Sono Takashi Miike Tilda Swinton Tony Chiu-Wai Leung Tony Ka Fai Leung Tony Scott Tsuyoshi Muro Wilson Yip Yi Huang Yoon-seok Kim Yûichi Fukuda
© Kinoreal. All Rights Reserved.