Does anybody else see more than one suspect connection here?

Director Benny Chan’s remake of the U.S. Hollywood blockbuster crime thriller “Cellular,” starring Kim Bassinger, into his streamlined and climactic “Connected” has been hailed as the first Hong Kong adaptation of a Hollywood film for Asian audiences. Usually it’s the other way around, with such groundbreaking Hong Kong flicks as “Infernal Affairs” being scouted out to quench an ever-thirsty Hollywood as.

There are several reasons for Hong Kong’s reluctance to adopt U.S. films, especially if they saw little praise. However, what was seen as a low-rating B-grade film in it’s earliest carnation, has found a renewed vigor as Chan shows how much a sprinkle of Hong Kong style can deliver to a previously deflated Hollywood flop.

Re-soldering character relationships and injecting an impressively graceful rhythm with a soundtrack and racing storyline is accentuated by the powerful brutality of its villains, and the compelling redemption story of an unwilling vigilante. Seeing this call to arms as a chance for a man who beats up and threatens women and children for a living, a seemingly wimpy, yet likeable, Bob makes a good team with his mainland counterpart. It’s inevitable what happens in the end, and looking past the basic plot, we can see why Benny Chan likes it that way.

Chan lives, as all of Hong Kong does, in an age of realization that the mainland is a force in its lives, and it’s there to stay. If the only connection was between a guy risking everything and achieving the unbelievable for a complete stranger was all this film had to offer, then one might ask why the original U.S. work was ever taken down off the shelf in the first place.

However, Chan has a lot more to say about the inspiration of connections between strangers, and the miracle of the transition from referring to this new person as “the other” to “my own.”

Looking over Chan’s message on a macro level, the mainland influence over Hong Kong’s booming entertainment has become undeniably apparent.

In Chan’s film, the traditional beauty, perseverance and emotional expression typical of a mysterious China, is seen as a perfect coupling with Louis Koo’s appealing style of that Hong Kong morally confused — yet utterly hilarious — hero moviegoers have all come to know and love. The pairing is not only inevitable, as they are thrown together by a corrupt international conspiracy against them, and only through trust and teamwork do they survive.

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