[Review + Festival] Eye in the Sky 跟蹤

shaw_mag

Maggie is a supporting cast in this movie.

Quote from 2007 Berlin Film Festival official site:

Gen zong

Eye in the Sky

Regie: Yau Nai Hoi

Land: Hongkong 2007.

Hongkong 2007.

Produktion: Milkyway Image, Hong Kong.

Regie: Yau Nai Hoi.

Buch: Au Kin Yee.

Kamera: Cheung Tung Leung.

Art Director: Raymond Chan.

Raymond Chan.

Kostüme: Mabel Kwan.

Musik: Guy Zerafa, Dave Klotz.

Ton: Tony Cheng.

Sounddesign: Martin Chappell.

Schnitt: David Richardson.

David Richardson.

Regieassistenz: William Cheng, Chan Po Chun.

Produzent: Johnnie To.

Production Manager: Paul Au.

Production Supervisor: Ding Yuin Shan.

Ding Yuin Shan.

Produktionsassistenz: Christy Lee, Jack Lai, Yau Tsz Kit.

Darsteller: Simon Yam (Captain Huang), Tony Leung Ka-Fai (Chen), Kate Tsui (Bo), Lam Suet, Maggie Shiu, Cheung Siu Fai, Ng Yuk Sau, Lai Yiu Cheung, Pang King Chi, Xie Xue Xin, Wong Wah Wo.

Simon Yam (Captain Huang), Tony Leung Ka-Fai (Chen), Kate Tsui (Bo), Lam Suet, Maggie Shiu, Cheung Siu Fai, Ng Yuk Sau, Lai Yiu Cheung, Pang King Chi, Xie Xue Xin, Wong Wah Wo.

Format: 35mm, 1:1.85, Farbe.

35mm, 1:1.85, Farbe.

Länge: 90 Minuten, 24 Bilder/Sekunde.

Originalsprache: Kantonesisch.

Uraufführung: 10. Februar 2007, Internationales Forum, Berlin.

Weltvertrieb: Sundream Motion Pictures Ltd., 10th Fl., Cable TV Tower, 9 Hoi Shung Road, Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong. Tel.: (85-2) 2112 7622, Fax: (85-2) 2112 7681, email: info@sundream-pictures.com

Synopsis

The Criminal Intelligence Bureau (CIB) is the undercover division of the Hong Kong police. Its agents appear to be ordinary people, and they possess the ability to adapt perfectly to any environment in order to carry out secret surveillance.

Captain Huang orders rookie Bo and other agents to infiltrate a suspected armed robbery ring. They quickly discover the criminals’ plans for a jewelry heist. The investigations eventually focus on the invisible leader of the gang: Chen seems like a mild-mannered bookworm, but he is actually a master criminal who excels in eluding the police. When he realizes that Captain Huang’s team is closing in on him, Chen decides to call off the heist. But his decision comes too late: Captain Huang manages to trace the mastermind’s phonecall and locate him. The gang members are killed when the police storm their hideout; Chen survives, but must go into hiding after brutally killing a cop.

Chen’s disappearance brings the investigation to a dead end and the Criminal Intelligence Bureau is assigned a kidnapping case. Bo realizes that an error on her part led to Chen’s escape, and she begins to doubt her abilities. During the course of her investigations in the new case, she runs into Chen, who is getting ready to leave town. With backup from Captain Huang, Bo pursues him. But when Chen unexpectedly attacks and wounds the Captain, Bo continues the difficult search for the elusive criminal on her own.

Captain Huang orders rookie Bo and other agents to infiltrate a suspected armed robbery ring. They quickly discover the criminals’ plans for a jewelry heist. The investigations eventually focus on the invisible leader of the gang: Chen seems like a mild-mannered bookworm, but he is actually a master criminal who excels in eluding the police. When he realizes that Captain Huang’s team is closing in on him, Chen decides to call off the heist. But his decision comes too late: Captain Huang manages to trace the mastermind’s phonecall and locate him. The gang members are killed when the police storm their hideout; Chen survives, but must go into hiding after brutally killing a cop.

Chen’s disappearance brings the investigation to a dead end and the Criminal Intelligence Bureau is assigned a kidnapping case. Bo realizes that an error on her part led to Chen’s escape, and she begins to doubt her abilities. During the course of her investigations in the new case, she runs into Chen, who is getting ready to leave town. With backup from Captain Huang, Bo pursues him. But when Chen unexpectedly attacks and wounds the Captain, Bo continues the difficult search for the elusive criminal on her own.

The eye of God

“Surveillance” literally means “watching over” in French. With the help of technology, nowadays people can be observed at all times, as with an all-seeing eye. The concept of an “eye in the sky” also exists in Chinese thinking as a form of divine intervention. An all-seeing eye not only “watches” from above, but also punishes the bad and rewards the good. Perhaps what we call “miracles” and “coincidences” are not so random after all...

Yau Nai Hoi

Biofilmography

Yau Nai Hoi was born on April 14, 1968 in Hong Kong. In 1989, he began working as a screenwriter. Since 1992, he has worked with directors such as Johnnie To and Wai Ka Fai and was involved in the screenplays for PTU (2003, Forum 2003) and Running on Karma (2003, Forum 2004).  EYE IN THE SKY is his directing debut.

[此贴子已经被作者于2007-6-16 2:32:08编辑过]

amy427

Shaw, Thank you for your information.

charmed

CIB..interesting.

Geez, Kate Tsui has higher billing than Maggie

Thanks for that Shaw

shaw_mag

Review by

Christoph Terhechte

(after screening on Feb 9, 2007)

Bo's job is watching. At the Criminal Intelligence Bureau of the Hong Kong Police Department, the young woman observes criminals. In her very first case, she's confronted with the inscrutable mastermind of a jewelry theft. A dangerous game of cat and mouse begins in the streets of Hong Kong Central, which unavoidably throws the rookie off.

Soon the spectator catches himself playing detective. The refined screenplay puts the visible and the audible into question, plays with the variables. And the staging gets increasingly wild. Zooms, pans, nervous cuts bring an intensity to the story's feverish atmosphere without distracting from the essential question: Is it humanly possible to remain an uninvolved spectator? Bo can't keep her cool, she intervenes in the story, makes mistakes. Eye in the Sky becomes a parable of the cinema and its emotions. Watching means taking part, and the spectator writes his own story. Yau Nai Hoi's directorial debut is deeply in debt to genre movies, but it finds a strikingly personal and original approach.

Christoph Terhechte

shaw_mag

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117932747.html?categoryid=2478&cs=1&nid=2577

Eye In the Sky

Ganchung (Hong Kong)

By DEREK ELLEY

A Sundream Motion Pictures presentation of a Milkway Image (H.K.) production. (Intl. sales: Sundream, H.K.) Produced by Johnnie To, Tsui Siu-ming. Executive producer, Stephen Ng.
Directed by Yau Nai-hoi. Screenplay, Yau, Au Kin-yee.
 
With: Simon Yam, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Kate Tsui, Lam Suet, Maggie Shiu, Cheung Siu-fai, Ng Yuk-sau, Lai Yiu-cheung, Pang King-chi, Xie Xuexin, Wong Wah-wo.
(Cantonese dialogue)

A Hong Kong police surveillance unit finds itself caught up in the rough-and-tumble of underworld violence in smart action-thriller "Eye in the Sky," helming debut of longtime Johnnie To scripter Yau Nai-hoi. Well-received at its world preem in Berlin's Forum, and stuffed with To regulars on both sides of the camera, this looks to have a similar fest and distribution arc to the best of To's own signed movies, and will be welcomed by the same aficionados.

Co-writing with Au Kin-yee, another key To creative, Yau has come up with a typical crime ensembler, full of unexpected twists and turns, that isn't as elaborately plotted as, say, "PTU," but has the distinctive whiff of the Milkyway Image brand. With thesps like Simon Yam, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Lam Suet and Maggie Shiu also signing on, pic also has the same "family" feel as To-helmed movies.

One marked difference is the visual style which, maybe to reflect the subject-matter, is more restless and edgier than To's norm and not in widescreen. Yau still finds time for some showpieces -- such as a rain-and-umbrellas pursuit near the end -- but they're not as operatically staged as in many other Milkyway productions.

Other difference is that, unlike some of Yau's earlier scripts, this one doesn't run out of gas in the third act. Pic is virtually a single, sustained intake of breath -- driven along by tight editing and a propulsive score -- with no personal diversions from the main story and a final-reel twist, when the tone is at its bleakest, that's particularly magical.

Opening plunges straight into the story, criss-crossing several of the main characters on a tramcar as the viewer still doesn't know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Sustained sequence leads straight to a jewelry store robbery in which the thieves escape by the skin of their teeth.

Leader of the gang is Shan (Leung) who, in a demonstration of ruthlessness that sets up his character for the finale, has to deal with the grumbles of his cohorts during a post-heist, rooftop barbecue. His men want a bigger score than they just pulled off -- and Shan himself wants a bigger cut of the goods from his superiors -- which leads to a second robbery that turns into a cat-and-mouse game between cops and crims.

Leading the surveillance unit is grizzled Capt. Wong, codenamed "Dog Head" (Yam, with glasses and stubble), who's taken under his wing a bushy-tailed rookie codenamed "Piggy" (cute Kate Tsui). Dog Head stresses to her that the SU simply tracks and monitors people, and doesn't become involved in either judgments or emotions -- a rule that Piggy later breaks, with heavy consequences, as they follow Shan through the streets of Kowloon.

Performances at all levels have the effortless of an ensemble that's comfortable with each other. Leung is especially good as the cool mastermind who conceals deeply psychotic rage, while Yam shows a more mature, kindlier side as the SU vet. Shiu is fine in a smaller role as his hard-assed SU boss.

Pic's title refers both to a Chinese concept of heaven's all-seeing eye (extended here to the role of Shan, who monitors his gang from a rooftop vantage point), as well as contempo surveillance equipment. Film has plenty of electronic gadgetry as the SU goes about its work, but doesn't focus per se on the social implications of Hong Kong's heavily monitored society. Chinese title roughly means "tracks" or "traces."

Camera (color), Cheung Tung-leung; editor, David Richardson; music, Guy Zerafa, Dave Klotz; art director, Raymond Chan; costumes, Mabel Kwan; sound (Dolby Digital), Tony Cheng; sound designer, Martin Chappell; assistant director, William Cheng. Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival (Forum), Feb. 9, 2007. Running time: 90 MIN.

 

[此贴子已经被作者于2007-2-13 9:53:51编辑过]

mimi

I do not like Kate Tsui as she claimed herself the only actress in this movie!

shaw_mag

David Borwell notes after watching "Eye in the Sky" premiere at HKIFF March 19, 2007  ：

This year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival is mammoth—at 23 days, perhaps the world’s longest. It’s smoothly meshed with the HK Filmart, a trade gathering for buyers and sellers, the Asian Film Awards, and a slew of other events, all under the umbrella of Entertainment Expo. The goal, Timothy Gray points out in a communique in Variety, is to confirm Hong Kong as a regional media hub.

。。。

Monday 19 March

Late afternoon, I gave my CinemaScope talk, with an addendum on HK cinema’s use of Scope. Good questions afterward.

With Meaghan I rushed off to Wanchai, where she lives and where I was slated to see the new Milkyway film, Eye in the Sky, at the Convention Center. After a comical mishap involving changing taxis, I made it to the Center just as the crowd was gathering. I hovered on the edge, uncertain of what to do next, when Yuan Shan Ding, Johnnie To’s right-hand man, saw me and gestured me in.

So I walked the red carpet, waiting for somebody to stop me. I should have remembered: This is HK, where such events are unbelievably informal.

Inside I caught up with Shan and got my ticket. At that moment I met another old friend, Athena Tsui, who was coordinating things in the foyer. Behind her Simon Yam, Lau Ching-wan (above left), Johnnie To, and Yau Nai-hoi were giving press interviews in the glare of TV lights. After snapping some pix, I went in and took my favorite seat, down front and center—where I also found another old Hong Kong friend, Li Cheuk-to, bustling about seeing to a dozen matters in his capacity as . Soon the major players came in too. Above, it’s Yau Nai-hoi, director of Eye in the Sky, on the left and producer Johnnie To on the right.

Then the ceremony started. The principals (To, Yau, Yam, Kate Tsui, Maggie Shiu, and Lam Suet) got up on stage and said a few words of introduction. Simon claimed that he gained twenty pounds for his role, while Lam Suet proudly said that he had not.

Compared to To’s own directorial efforts, Eye in the Sky is more conventional genre fare. It’s very linear, giving us essentially a ninety-minute pursuit sequence. As a result, we get almost no backstory about the plainclothes cops (Yam and Kate Tsui) who are tailing heistmeister Tony Leung Kar-fai. It does recall other Milkyway films, which are often built around games of chase and disguise. It’s also very much a street film; you see a lot of the Hollywood Road area, and there are nice images of passersby caught unawares.

Here forward momentum is everything, with virtually no pauses for reflection or just catching your breath. Each scene seems caught on the fly, with aggressive smash-and-grab camerawork. Eye contrasts intriguingly with To’s Expect the Unexpected, which exhibits more control of the run-and-gun look and immerses us more thoroughly in the lives of its police protagonists. Still, Yau’s career will be worth watching, not least because Hong Kong needs to replenish its cadre of young directors.

Audience response to Eye was enthusiastic. Darcy Pacquet has some quick first thoughts here.

I Am a Cyborg followed, but I have several other chances to catch it, and sleep beckons. Back to the hotel. Tomorrow, Tuesday, is the biggest day of my trip.

charmed

Probably appropriate to put this here instead of the news thread:

Translation by Em:

http://tvbspace.blogspot.com/

Maggie Shiu and Kate Tsui join Simon Yam at Hong Kong Film Festival

The 31st Hong Kong International Film Festival had its grand opening yesterday, showing two films - local production "Eye in the Sky" and Korean film "I'm a Cyborg But That's OK". This also marked the Hong Kong premier for "Eye", so the film's producer Johnny To and Tsui Siu Ming, director Yau Nai-hoi and cast members Simon Yam, Maggie Shiu, Kate Tsui and Lam Suet were all present. As the guests all walked up the red carpet, Maggie and Kate both appeared in white dresses, the former showing off her legs and the latter, her shoulders as they stole the show. During the show, Kate was afraid of revealing herself and was forever tugging at the top of her dress, looking a little unrefined. Other guests at the event included Nick Cheung, Sean Lau and Amy Kwok. Yesterday also happened to be Simon's birthday. so when everyone sung happy birthday to him he could not turn it down. He will be celebrating with his wife at a crab restaurant,

Already a tall girl, Maggie wore six inch heels to go with her outfit that made her look even taller. She reveals that she was in a rush to get to the event, so she had to run here and this has left her cramping in both legs. Asked if anyone has massaged her legs for her, she smiles: "Yes, my mother, or my beautician." As for Kate's sexy look, Maggie laughs that she would rather show off her lower body than brave the cold at the top of her body. This is the first time that Kate has taken on a leading movie role, so she dressed up carefully for the event and her outfit costs a five figure sum.
--------------

Haha, reminds me of the time I went to my friend's 21st birthday party in my six inch heels - it is very very weird to hug men who are shorter than you

How tall is Maggie again?

shaw_mag

Maggie is 5'5" or about 167 cm.

The 6" high heel really ackward to me. he...he...

charmed

6 inches can make a person looks disproportionate - the legs look too long.

167cm is quite tall in HK...I always thought she was around 165.

mimi

QUOTE:

以下是引用shaw_mag在2007-3-20 13:32:28的发言：

Maggie is 5'5" or about 167 cm.

The 6" high heel really ackward to me. he...he...

she is 5'5'? is that accurate?

charmed

How tall do you see her as?

I just realised Michelle Yeoh was at the same Film Festival thing...wearing pink

jobogae

Thanks for sharing the pics.  Those pink heels on Maggie are too funky looking hahaha ... luv it.  Maggie is too cute.    

shaw_mag

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film/reviews/article_display.jsp?&rid=8945

Eye in the Sky

Bottom Line: Somewhat, but not totally, disappointing debut from Johnnie To's right hand.

By Elizabeth Kerr

March 21, 2007

Hong Kong International Film Festival

HONG KONG -- "Eye in the Sky" ("Gun Chong") meets somewhere between Johnnie To's "Breaking News" and any number of great cop/gangster thrillers Yau Nai-hoi has written for To and Milkyway Image in the last decade -- of which "The Mission," (rumored to be going down the Hollywood remake road), "Election," "Throwdown" and "PTU" are just a few. This is as stylish as anything Yau has written for To, if a little more ragged in keeping with the subject matter.

The film is likely to attract a reasonable amount of interest in Asia, if only for the pedigree and stars involved, and overseas in festivals since To's name will carry it a long way. While it's sure to make it into any To/Milkyway completist's DVD collection, the film isn't strong enough to move much beyond niche markets.

The story is a simple one. The police department's Surveillance Unit, led by Doghead (Yam) with some help from a computer-bound crew under Maggie Siu, welcomes a new recruit, Piggy (Tsui), just as a complex operation against jewel thieves begins. (Jewels maintain their place as Hong Kong criminals' favored high-end target). Piggy's young, and doesn't look like a cop, which to Doghead makes her a perfect tail. The operation begins when the SU connects local lay-about Fatman (Milkyway favorite Lam) with a robbery that went off in Hong Kong's business district in broad daylight. Fatman eventually leads the squad to the mastermind behind the operation, Shan (Leung), who enjoys a good game of Sodoku on the tram when he needs to plot out his plans.

The story focuses as much on procedure as it does on Piggy and her insertion into police work. As her mentor, Doghead is supportive and understanding, and Siu's boss is a reasonable one. But Piggy drops the ball on Shan -- referred to as Hollowman -- when she's forced to make an ethical choice, her first on the job, and questions her own capabilities. Thankfully, the script avoids cliche and she's never threatened with her job or thrown out of it on the spot. But anyone even remotely familiar with To & Co. will know that situation is going to come up again. Inevitably, it will be more personal.

The film's biggest flaw may be the glaring missed opportunity to make a larger comment on the omnipresence of general surveillance in the world at large. The film does forge a decent sense of paranoia by suggesting we're being watched at all times. Hollowman and Fatman have cops on them, but cameras are everywhere. Aerial scene transitions recall grainy CCTV images. The streets are crowded and chaotic: Anyone could be watching anyone else. Sadly, the script doesn't explore the voyeuristic nature of contemporary society much beyond that.

Cheung's frantic, hand-held cinematography goes a long way to creating the atmosphere in which the cops exist and work. Constant jarring cuts and quick pans across busy intersections give the impression that the audience is trying to find a target through a crowded field as well. And Yau does an excellent job of exploiting Hong Kong's winding streets, endless alleys and overwhelming numbers.

An opening sequence, which begins on one of the city's venerable jam-packed trams and ends with a wide shot of a pedestrian crossing that fills up as if floodgates were opened, smoothly establishes the mood and pace.

"Eye in the Sky" is similar in tone to much of Milkyway's material. This is a world where violence hovers just below the surface of decent society. When Shan has his orders on the first heist disobeyed, he flies off the handle in a flash, and then settles down just as quickly. There's the requisite raging gun battle, but Yau and Au veer off with an unexpected, upbeat finale.

If Yau was at all uncomfortable in his first turn behind the camera, it didn't show in the performances. Fortunately, he had a strong cast to work with including young Tsui that manages to create whole characters from the near archetypes that were written. Leung and Yam could do the cop/robber shtick with their eyes closed: Each has done it time and again, often for To. Leung brings a simmering, intense rage to the character while Yam, waddling around with an extra 20 pounds, goes against type to play Doghead as unglamorously workmanlike. Yau has crafted a decent enough film, but it lacks the cohesive polish of his mentor's best work.

shaw_mag

http://hk.bcmagazine.net/hk.bcmagazine.issues/bcmagazine_webissue234/17cinema.html

Review by Yvonne Teoh

Eye In The Sky

Starring: Tony Leung Ka Fai, Simon Yam, Kate Tsui, Lam Suet, Maggie Shiu
Director: Yau Nai Hoi
Scheduled release: 21 June 2007

“There are cameras everywhere. The police can nail you with a hair,” an outwardly unassuming – in more ways than one – criminal mastermind (a masterful Tony Leung Ka Fai) tells his subordinates early on in Eye in the Sky. Even if an Octopus card rather than biological evidence proves to be the crucial clue, they are prescient words in a film that gets its name from how the French word for surveillance is translated into English, and whose main ‘good guys’ are from the Criminal Intelligence Bureau (CIB), the secretive surveillance branch of the Hong Kong Police.

The devil is in the details. Carefully observe and remember everything. Keep watch, stay alert, track and tail rather than determine or even intervene to give relief to a dying colleague. This is what fresh-faced Bo (former Miss Hong Kong Kate Tsui, making her film debut) – both codenamed and nicknamed ‘Piggy’ – is told is her job, nay duty and responsibility, by her team leader, a bespectacled man with stubble and a paunch codenamed Dog Head (a dressed down but still charming Simon Yam).

For even while closed-circuit television cameras and other technological gadgets assist police in their work these days, policing still needs to be done by dedicated but otherwise regular human beings; men and women prepared to lose a colleague, if not their own lives, to ensure law and order prevail. This is but one of the messages rookie director Yau Nai Hoi conveys via this solid debut work with its shades of previous Milkyway Image movies, like Expect the Unexpected (1998) and P.T.U. (2003), the preponderance of Milkyway Image regulars in front of the camera and thematic importance on team players.

Yet, ironically, viewers are meant to mostly identify with one particular character in this film. The kind of newbie cop who comes across as over-idealistic yet raw, the youthful Bo is still trying to find her feet in the shadowy and at times danger-fraught world she has chosen to enter. Respectful of not only the veteran Dog Head but also his four-letter-word-prone commanding officer (Maggie Siu plays this role with obvious relish), she nonetheless also shows before too long that she has a mind of her own.

Which at times leads Bo to run afoul of her seniors but at others marks her with the initiative of a promising unit member. And both initiative and conscientiousness are needed in spades when the CIB and associated police teams go up against an organized team of robbers whose heists are very well planned and precisely timed. This criminal gang is not without faults, though, and a careless action by a slovenly fellow the CIB nickname ‘Fat Man’ (the ever-watchable Lam Suet) gives the CIB the opening they need to hunt down the gang and bring them to justice...

Eschewing the vast expanses of the widescreen favoured by Johnnie To (who co-produced this work with Siuming Tsui), Eye in the Sky is more modest than the offerings I have come to expect from Milkyway Images. For better or worse, the result feels more realistic and less showy even if less stylish. And it shows that Yau Nai Hoi, respectful of his acknowledged sifu (see the interview in this same issue) is, nonetheless, his own man at the helm of a movie.