With BREAKING NEWS, we’re back in familiar Milkyway “police-procedure movie” territory. This time, it’s the media in the spotlight, and the film looks at the way news is produced, used and exploited. The film follows a group of outlaws on the run from the cops after a lethal shootout. When one of their comrades is killed in action, they rashly decide to do a heist that quicky goes badly wrong. The robbers then go into hiding in an apartment block and a siege begins, with every moment being recorded for posterity by the Hong Kong news crews.

The use of the media as a weapon comes into play when a camera crew who happen to be filming nearby capture some of the initial gunfight, including a shot of a police officer surrendering and kow-towing to the robbers. Humiliated, the police set about putting their own “spin” on things, and it’s here that Rebecca (Kelly Chen) enters as a police media relations expert. She sets up a command post outside the tower block where the robbers are holed up and gets more than she bargained for when one of the robbers, Chan Yat-Yuen (Richie Ren), makes contact with her.

The opening scene of BREAKING NEWS is simply outstanding – a long and ferocious gun battle takes place on the streets of Hong Kong with the camera moving smoothly without a single cutaway. This single shot seems to go on forever and is so impressive and dramatic it really gets the blood pumping. At the risk of sounding like one of those bite-sized blurbs used on the front of an Entertainment In Video DVD, it "out-Woos Woo". From an opening like that you just know the only direction the film can go is down, and sure enough, it does.

What lets BREAKING NEWS down is the almost total lack of characterisation. No one is given much background (we don’t even know what the bandits did prior to their shootout at the start of the film) and this leads to an understandable dip in viewer interest. If we don’t care about the characters, there’s nothing to interest us aside from all the admittedly impressive visuals. A case in point is aging police officer Hoi (Hui Siu-Hung) whose uncontrollable flatulence is neither a plot point nor a source of comic relief. It’s one of the many things that are there in the film but don’t really serve any purpose. There are a couple of stifled attempts to bring in some of the old brotherhood and loyalty themes among the thieves, but it fizzles out without going anywhere.

The performances are similarly mediocre, with Nick Cheung and Richie Ren going through the motions and being largely forgettable. The presence of singing star Kelly Chen is played up, but to be honest she doesn’t really do a lot apart from sitting in the Command Centre looking good. She’s the kind of woman that makes you want to get down on your knees and thank God you’re a man, but she cannot carry a film and at times her performance is a little creaky. A saving grace is the presence of Lam Suet as the father caught up in the siege with his two young children. His interaction with the robbers is excellent and provides the only real tension that doesn’t seem forced.

Without going into details that would spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, the ending does pick up and once again it’s down to some great camera work and direction. So what you have, in essence, is a fantastic opening, a good ending, and a whole lot of gawping at Kelly Chen in between. It doesn’t seem so bad when I think of it in those terms, and at a shade under 90 minutes it’s the kind of film you probably wouldn’t mind slipping into the DVD player on a whim on a rainy afternoon.