Captain Wong (Simon Yam), head of a Hong Kong Police surveillance unit, takes on new recruit Ho (Kate Tsui). Their target is a gang of jewel thieves headed by Shan (Tony Leung Ka-Fai). Ho (nicknamed “Piggy” by Wong, much to her annoyance) learns the tricks of the trade perusing Shan through tailing “Fatboy” (Lam Suet), one of his thugs. Can they crack the gang before they strike again?

EYE IN THE SKY has some top-notch performances by the leads, including a paunchy Simon Yam as a fatherly mentor to the raw recruit Ho, but suffers from an under-developed script and some negligible direction. There are two distinct plot threads, following the cops and the robbers, and it often feels like the two elements don’t mesh together very well.

The surveillance tricks displayed by the team are quite good and will occasionally impress in their cleverness. The film asks some serious questions about privacy and today’s CCTV-obsessed world, and there’s one very sardonic scene when a fight between the criminal gang is broken up when one spots a woman undressing in a neighbouring apartment block. We even see, later in the movie, that the technology can cut both ways.

The supporting cast are as strong as the leads. Kate Tsui, who appears to debut here, is great and believable as the eager-to-please rookie, and we learn the Surveillance Unit’s techniques through her eyes. Also worth a mention are Maggie Shaw, who plays the tough-as-nails base controller and Lam Suet as a dim-witted goon of Shan, and the Surveillance Unit’s only link with the gang.

None of the characters are given any kind of background or depth, and this creates a detached feeling that you couldn’t really care less about them most of the time. This is the film’s main drawback, and it’s hard to create real tension under these circumstances. Nevertheless, the strong performances (especially by Yam) and a few clever tricks and turns (not to mention the now-obligatory inclusion of impossible dilemmas for the protagonists) make this a still very watchable film. It’s just unlikely you’ll want to revisit it any time soon.

One other thing (and this has nothing to do with the actual movie as such) is that the dialogue is delivered in an unusually clear and manageable pace, making it great for people learning Cantonese. It seems to have less than the usual slang, slurrings and contractions, and there’s a lot of repeated dialogue to aid memory. Furthermore, the nature of the film means we get lots of descriptions of people and what they’re wearing – all essential elementary building blocks of a language.