Review | Cyber Heist movie review: Aaron Kwok plays computer hacker in action thriller with a laughably shallow understanding of how the internet works
- A fairly watchable, action-driven crime thriller, Cyber Heist is badly let down by its antiquated depiction of how the internet functions
- Kwok plays a hacker and police informant determined not to go back to jail but who finds he’s being set up to be the scapegoat for a digital bank heist
2/5 stars
Cyber Heist is a fairly watchable, action-driven Hong Kong crime thriller that is rendered laughable by its ill-advised central conceit of visualising the internet using the most cringingly antiquated imagery imaginable.
Kwok plays Cheuk, a computer hacker and former convict who works for a cybersecurity company headed by Chan (Lam Ka-tung). With a wife (Megan Lai Ya-yan) and a young daughter struggling with a heart problem at home, the reformed Cheuk is determined not to go to prison ever again.
Bad news: soon after he uses a special firewall he has secretly developed to interrupt an audacious digital bank heist that temporarily shuts down Hong Kong’s banking system, Cheuk realises that his boss is in fact the one who stages the virus attack in the first place.
The reluctant hero is then forced simultaneously to fend off Chan’s efforts to make him the next scapegoat for the bad guys’ financial crimes, while covertly collecting incriminating evidence for inspector Suen (Simon Yam Tat-wah) of the police force’s Cyber Security and Technology Crime Bureau.
Quite how the filmmakers decided it’s a good idea to dumb down their big-budget feature in such a way almost 30 years later is the real mystery here, although those people who believed the Y2K bug was an insect might find much to enjoy in the film’s jarring literal-mindedness.
Next to frequent shots of characters frantically typing on their keyboards, Cyber Heist also shows us the world of the internet as a pixelated forest; firewalls as … walls; digital banking frauds as masked thieves running away with suitcases of banknotes; and the Dark Web as a dimly lit, deserted building in which people in hoodies meet for shady transactions.
As diverting as this film can be – it does take time to go through the tropes of any self-respecting Hong Kong action thriller, including an exciting chase scene set in Tai Kwun, the cultural hub in Central – it will be hard for most discerning viewers not to be distracted by the exceedingly awkward attempt at cyberpunk filmmaking on display.
While it is distinctly light on humour, Cyber Heist may prove an unintendedly funny experience if you happen to watch it with an audience in just the right frame of mind.
