Overheard (Cantonese) MovieGenre: Thriller / Drama / Crime
General Release Date: 30 Jul 2009
Running Time:
Distributor: Ram Entertainment
Cast: ChingWan Lau, Daniel Wu, Louis Koo
Director: Alan Mak, Felix Chong
Review
A major stock exchange in the world, Hong Kong attracts not only money but anyone who tries to manipulate the market. At the Hong Kong Police Force Commercial Crime Bureau, an operation is underway to infiltrate a trading company where a man nicknamed Boss is the chief suspect. The team, led by Inspector Leung (Lau Ching Wan) together with Yeung (Louis Koo) and Lam (Daniel Wu) installs bugs to monitor the communications. When crucial information on a surging share is intercepted, a moment of greed now puts them in a crossfire between the Bureau and the boss.
Lee Jae-jin composed a warm and at the same time sad soundtrack for the drama picture “Failan”. A score that perfectly catures the movie’s atmosphere and mood. Every time the strings come into play, you can clearly hear that this isn’t a symphonic soundtrack, but that a synthesizer did all the work instead. Still, that’s no problem at all, since the score oftentimes relies on noteable piano pieces, which serve us with some good themes that are easily recognizable after a while and get repeated while undergoing several alternations. Even when the strings are in the musical focus, we are happily willing to “overhear” that they were just created at a keyboard.
The OST to “Failan” has a very flowing and melancholic character, that always manages to bestow a pleased smile on you. As the movie does, this score, too, despite all the grief and drama, also radiates a certain kind of warmth, that is very affecting and creates a fuzzy feeling in the listener.
Cecilia Cheung gives a little introduction with some words in broken Korean, which I first believed to be Cantonese, though. She should work on her pronounciation, I guess.
Right after this a melancholic, yet friendly motif is played by a wind instrument, which often gets outplayed by the strings and is supported by reserved piano sounds. In “Prologue Voyage” we get to hear one of the main motifs, which is slowly introduced to us by a piano, and is accompanied by the modest use of some strings. This motif gets picked up again and is getting many alternations in “First Letter”, “Kang-jae in the Picture”, “Job Agency” and “Kang-jae’s Room”. It is obvious that with its sad, and yet somehow hopeful motif these tracks are supposed to represent Kang-jae’s theme.
“Morning Bicycle 1″, with its more joyful and jumpy tunes stronly reminds us of a dreamy autumn day. “Sea of Failan”, “Morning Bicycle 2″, as well as “Hope” take up the motif again, whereas it gets played a little bit faster at times or slower at others. Furthermore, in “Morning Bicycle 2″ we also get to listen to the scene in which the Korean lady, who gave Failan shelter and a home, tries to teach Cecilia Cheung some words of Korean. That’s not only quite funny, but also brings back the pictures of the movie to your mind. Failan’s theme is refreshingly blithe, without losing the melancholic aftertaste that naturally comes with it.
It’s pretty apparent that most of the tracks on the CD aren’t exceeding the 2 or even 1 minute mark. Therefore, you could call many of them pieces that only fill the gaps of the CD. But actually the tracks always fade into the next one very well, so that we don’t get the feeling that there are several short tracks, but instead almost think of the CD as one single big track.
With its running time of more than 4 minutes we are lead to believe that “Last Letter” may deliver more than any of the other pieces, but actually we just get reheated old stuff. Even though luckily in a more diverse way than it was the case with some other titles, where you almost had the feeling that they were just pressed 1:1 on the CD for a second time.
The CD’s highlight is without a doubt the only sung piece of the soundtrack: “Love”. “Kang-jae’s Choice” already gave us a little foretaste of this track with its quite acoustic guitar tunes. “Love” starts with a gentle guitar solo and is occassionaly accompanied by a very reserved piano. Cecilia Cheung’s voice stands in the song’s focus, of course, whereas she sings in Mandarin-Chinese. As we know, Cheung’s voice has a distinctive scratchy sound, but when she sings this really isn’t apparent anymore. She may not be what you would call a born singer, but at least she can sing. Not for nothing she is also a successful Canto-Popstar. Well ok, latter might not be a good argument…
Still, it remains a fact that “Love” is a very nice, tranquil and sad song full of yearning, which also fits very well into the rest of the soundtrack
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