Starring: Lau Ching-wan, Louis Koo Tin-lok, Daniel Wu Yin-cho Directors: Alan Mak Siu-fai, Felix Chong Man-keung Category: IIB (Cantonese)
Two years after Overheard, the film's main cast and crew reunite for more clandestine surveillance and white-collar crime. But whereas Lau Ching-wan, Louis Koo and Daniel Wu all played policemen in the 2009 hit crime thriller, Overheard 2 has Lau as a high-flying stockbroker and Wu as a mysterious ex-soldier adept at wire-tapping as well as eluding the cops, including counter-terrorism response unit Inspector Jack Ho (Koo).
The intrigue begins when Manson Law (Lau) crashes his expensive sports car while on the phone with powerful tycoon Tony Wong (Kenneth Tsang Kong). Combing the wreckage, police discover a military surveillance device.
Suspecting that Law's office and home are also bugged, Ho is assigned to follow up on the case and soon uncovers a trail that leads to Joe (Wu), a dexterous individual living in a nursing home so he can be close to his mother (Chiao Chiao), an Alzheimer's patient.
An elderly woman with mostly happy memories of her long life, she, in moments of lucidity, is filled with a strong urge for revenge against the people who wronged her murdered husband (Woo Fung, who appears in several flashback scenes).
Compared with Chiao as well as some of the male actors, Overheard 2's nominal leading ladies Huang Yi and Michelle Ye Xuan's parts - as the wives of Lau and Koo's characters, respectively - are largely superfluous. Huang's presence is further weakened in the original Cantonese version of this ensemble film by way of the mainland actress being dubbed (and frequently filmed from various angles that obscure her face while her character is speaking).