EYE IN THE SKY (Hong Kong, 2007)
Directed by: Yau Nai-hoi
Starring: Simon Yam, Kate Tsui, Tony Leung Kar-fai, Maggie Siu, Lam Suet

Yau Nai-hoi may not be a name familiar to Western movie-goers but his long collaboration with Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai has seen him write the scripts to Milkyway hits like ELECTION, ELECTION 2, THE MISSION, RUNNING ON KARMA, PTU and dozens of others, all the way back to 1993 when he wrote Johnnie To’s Shaw Brothers remake, THE BARE-FOOTED KID. He’s won ten awards for his writing and it was about time he directed his own movie. The result is EYE IN THE SKY one of the most complicated, and satisfying, movies Johnnie To has produced in a long time.

A dissection of the Hong Kong Police Department’s SU (Surveillance Unit) it opens with a long, wordless sequence in which newcomer Kate Tsui (a wildly popular television actress) is tailing Simon Yam as her audition for joining the SU. They cross paths with Tony Leung Kar-fai, a criminal who is staking out a jewelry store for a heist by his gang that can’t shoot straight and for the rest of the movie the paths of cops and criminals cross, overlap, miss each other by seconds and track one another to ground. Milkyway Image movies often deal with fate and coincidence (as they say, “Without coincidence there is no drama.”) and in this film these tendencies are amplified to the nth degree. It’s a game of tag between an highly intelligent crook (Tony Leung Kar-fai) and a highly professional police force using security camera footage, records of rechargeable travel cards and footwork and with Hong Kong as its playground.

Simon Yam packed on the pounds to play SU officer, Wong Man-chin (and he also looks like he stuffed a pillow down his shirt) and he and Tony Leung are the twin poles around which the movie orbits. Bouncing between them are Kate Tsui, but also a fistful of Milkyway veterans like Lam Suet, Samuel Pang, Eddie Cheung, Maggie Siu and, of course, Yau Nai-hoi who delivers one of the most visually arresting recent films from Hong Kong.