The Silent War
Alan Mak, Felix Chong
The story: Blind piano tuner assistant He Bing (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) has an excellent sense of hearing. He is recruited by Zhang Xuening (Zhou Xun), an agent of 701 Headquarters of the newly established China Republic government in the 1950s, to detect the frequencies on which the enemy, a vague threat, is broadcasting sensitive information.

It has been said that feted Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu Wai acts with his eyes. In acclaimed dramas such as In The Mood For Love (2000) and Lust, Caution (2007), he could convey the emotions roiling beneath a placid surface with just a searing glance.
So how does he fare when the character he is playing is blind?
Pretty well, thank you very much, and this role lets Leung demonstrate that he does not act with just his eyes. His charisma remains intact even while wearing lenses or dark glasses that cover his piercing peepers. It helps that the character is not some angsty tortured person but a likeable rascally fellow who has to get by on his wits.
The sound design also does a good job of putting the audience in He’s shoes by heightening the noises that filter through to him in a scene where he is being tailed by Zhang and her men.
As Zhang and He later work together, she begins to feel protective of him and he starts to have feelings for her. Their relationship is played out with restraint but perhaps a little too tentatively as other characters enter the picture.
One is actually more intrigued by the enigmatic relationship between Zhang and her boss Old Devil (Wang Xuebing). And He later ends up with the cryptologist Shen Jing (Mavis Fan) in a development that feels rather pat.
The film reunites Leung with Hong Kong film-makers Alan Mak and Felix Chong, who had collaborated as writers for the excellent cop thriller Infernal Affairs (2002). Here, Mak and Chong both direct, from a script adapted from China novelist Mai Jia’s An Suan (Plot Against, 2006).
And it seems possible to detect the seeds of The Silent War in that earlier film.
There is a tensely pivotal scene in Infernal Affairs which involved Morse code being tapped out on a window. Here, the transmission of Morse code messages consumes the protagonists.
The stakes, though, are generally vague here and one never gets the sense of the enemy beyond a few references to Chiang Kai-shek.
And when the stakes are made clearer towards the end in a hunt for the master enemy agent Chungking, what unfolds rests too much on the trite coincidence of similar-sounding Morse codes with very different meanings.
The poignancy of the tragedy that strikes He is also diminished as the rationale for his actions is less than fully convincing.
But at least Leung keeps one watching.
(ST)