Digital Domain
Director Wong Hing-fan reunites with leading man Aaron Kwok for a 21st century heist flick. Get your plastic face masks ready.
Cyber Heist
Director: Wong Hing-fan • Writers: Philip Lui, Howard Yip, Shum Kwan-sin
Starring: Aaron Kwok, Gordon Lam, Patrick Tam, Megan Lai, Simon Yam, Tony Wu, Zeno Koo, Kenny Wong
Hong Kong • 1hr 50mins
Opens Hong Kong March 9 • IIB
Grade: B-
Cyber Heist | 斷網 is one of those movies where the “hacker” or some kind of computer genius pounds away on their keyboard on just one row. You know what I mean? As if no keys other than A, S, D, F, G, H, J ,K, L and return matter. When reformed hacker-turned-digital security hot shot Cheuk Ka-chun (an entirely game Aaron Kwok Fu-shing) sits down at his terminal to fend off a bank attack with his magic firewall, he boots and roots and executes and selects Y/N like mad – from the home row. It’s all a great deal of nonsense. Not as much “WTF?” as in Roy Chow’s standard-bearer Murderer, and not quite as much as in the notorious NCIS episode that was convinced no one would notice two people using a single keyboard but hey. We can’t all rise to those levels of cinematic lunacy. For that matter it’s not quite as ridiculous at Blackhat and it’s “Yau Ma Tei!” moment. And it’s infinitely more entertaining.
Director Danny Wong Hing-fan makes a massive u-turn from his first film, the gritty low-key drama about Hong Kong’s McRefugees, i’m livin’ it (also starring Kwok) for slick, glossy, silly action, and most notably throws his hat in the ring in the Can We Represent Digital Space On Screen And Not Look A Fool? sweepstakes. Wong demonstrates a good deal of range with Cyber Heist; i’m livin’ it was as quiet and intimately shot as this is blustery and big. And on the cyberspace note, well, let’s just say his “dark web” is fabulously campy – but at least he gave it a shot. He went there.
Kwok IRL… for now
The action begins on a regular weekday, with Cheuk at a school interview for his sickly daughter (there’s always a sickly child), recovering from a heart (?) surgery and in need of a special, very expensive school (uh oh). He has to take off when his co-worker (Patrick Tam Yiu-man) calls with an emergency. A bank is being hacked and hundreds of millions of dollars are being siphoned off. Thing is, it’s being stolen by Cheuk’s boss (Kenny Wong Tak-bun), who’s working with a remote hacker (Tony Wu Tsz-tung), and for a much, much bigger fish. Shit goes sideways later, and Cheuk’s immediate supervisor Chan Ming-chi (the hardest working man in Hong Kong cinema, Gordon Lam Ka-tung), who’s also in on the scheme, takes over. Turns out Chan also has a sickly family member, a brother. When Cheuk finds out what’s happening and gets roped into the plot (because sickly daughter) he goes to the po-po, to cybercrimes chief Suen Ban (Simon Yam Tat-wah). But of course, his relatively useless wife (Megan Lai Ya-yan) and sickly child get dragged into Chan’s conspiracy. Typing hijinks ensue.
Writers Philip Lui Koon-Nam and Howard Yip Ming-Ho (Chasing the Dragon), and Shum Kwan-Sin (producer Cheang Pou-soi’s Limbo) pile on both the digital and action clichés, studiously avoiding logic – like Cheuk making himself a fugitive instead of telling Suen he’s being threatened in a five-minute conversation. That’s not on Lui, Yip and Shum per se; this is Action Movie Scriptwriting 101, but it’s just as irksome here as in anything from Marvel, or Netflix, or Liam Neeson’s geriaction oeuvre. There’s nothing in Cyber Heist about the lure of untraceable theft (is it truly untraceable?) the fragility of our wired systems or the widening gap among even the middle class – Cheuk is told point blank he can bribe debenture his daughter into the school if he has the cheddar – but that’s not what it’s about. It’s a heist movie, just without any physical items. It’s right there in the damn title.
Still, Wong exploits Hong Kong spaces well – welcome, Tai Kwun, to the set piece club – like desolate waterside parking lots and TST guest houses, when he’s not stylising the digital world (IRL and cyberspace) in a greyscale landscape. Cheuk’s office is a clinic in post-modern LED lit interior design; it looks like a stage, and in some ways heightens the fantastical nature of the story. But it’s the digital landscape that’s most bizarre, amusing, creative, goofy … all of the above. It seems you enter cyberspace by putting on a plastic mask straight out of an ’80s Laura Branigan video – except clear. The red-suited avatars representing users pulling funds into their accounts by picking up briefcases dashing to their doors, navigating a forest of fibre optic cables, digitised data and spreading viruses is novel if nothing else, and the dark web is just brilliant. It’s all whip-cracking and distant screams in a lightless, undefined space, where users wear black robes and look ready for a cult sacrifice. And it’s the dark web. Who’s to say it’s not like that? — DEK