Sparrow (2008 film)

Sparrow (Chinese: 文雀; pinyin: Wen que; Cantonese Yale: Man4 jeuk3) is a 2008 Hong Kong caper film produced and directed by Johnnie To. The film stars veteran Milkyway Image cast and crew alumni Simon Yam, Gordon Lam, Law Wing-cheung and Kenneth Cheung as a small gang of pickpockets, with each member being mysteriously approached by a beautiful Taiwanese woman (Kelly Lin) with a hidden agenda.

Sparrow
Promotional poster
Directed byJohnnie To
Produced byJohnnie To
Written byChan Kin-Chung
Fung Chih-chiang
Milkyway Creative Team
StarringSimon Yam
Kelly Lin
Gordon Lam
Law Wing-cheung
Kenneth Cheung
Music byXavier Jamaux
Fred Avril
CinematographyCheng Siu-Keung
Edited byDavid M. Richardson
Production
company
Universe Entertainment
Milkyway Image
Distributed byUniverse Films Distribution Co. Ltd.
China Film Group
Release date
  • 11 February 2008 (2008-02-11) (Berlinale)
  • 19 June 2008 (2008-06-19) (Hong Kong)
Running time
87 minutes
CountryHong Kong
LanguageCantonese
Budget$0.8 million[1]
Box office$3.55 million[2]

Sparrow remained in pre-production for three years from 2005 to 2008, with To shooting the film in between other projects. The film was selected in competition at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival, premiering during the festival in February 2008. It was released in Hong Kong on 19 June 2008.

Plot

Kei (Simon Yam) is the experienced leader of a team of pickpockets.(Pickpockets are also known as "Sparrows" in Hong Kong slang). He enjoys a carefree lifestyle taking photos with his vintage Rolleiflex. One day a dashing beauty, Chun-Lei (Kelly Lin), suddenly appears in Kei's viewfinder. Kei is mesmerized. Every member of his team has an encounter with her.... But behind Chun-lei's attractive facade lies a mysterious past and a mission to set herself free.

Cast
RoleActor
Kei/The SparrowSimon Yam
Chung Chun-leiKelly Lin
BoGordon Lam
SakLaw Wing-cheung
MacKenneth Cheung
Fu Kim-tongLo Hoi-pang
LungLam Suet

Production

Director Johnnie To shot the film in Hong Kong over a three-year period. In an interview, To said he and his crew would shoot every three or four months between projects.[3]

Awards and nominations
Awards
Award Category Name Outcome
45th Golden Horse Film Awards Best Original Film Score Xavier Jamaux, Fred Avril Nominated
Best Cinematography Cheng Siu-Keung Won
28th Hong Kong Film Awards Best Director Johnnie To Nominated
Best Actor Simon Yam Nominated
Best Cinematography Cheng Siu-Keung Nominated
Best Film Editing David M. Richardson Nominated
Best Original Film Score Xavier Jamaux, Fred Avril Nominated
3rd Asian Film Awards Best Cinematography Cheng Siu-Keung Nominated
2008 Asia Pacific Screen Awards Best Feature Film Nominated
Best Achievement in Directing Johnnie To Nominated
Best Performance by an Actor Simon Yam Nominated
Best Achievement in Cinematography Cheng Siu-Keung Nominated
Berlin International Film Festival
Year Award Result
2008 Golden Bear In Competition
gollark: `fenv.h` seems like it's unimportant and can just be set randomly.
gollark: `<errno.h>`> For testing error codes reported by library functions. Pretty sure this is unnecessary as osmarkslibc cannot, in fact, fail.
gollark: `<ctype.h>`> Defines set of functions used to classify characters by their types or to convert between upper and lower case in a way that is independent of the used character set (typically ASCII or one of its extensions, although implementations utilizing EBCDIC are also known). osmarkslibc will ship the entire Unicode table in this header for purposes.
gollark: `complex.h`> A set of functions for manipulating complex numbers. What an oddly useful standard library feature. I'll use quaternions instead in osmarkslibc™ as they are better.
gollark: `assert.h`> Contains the assert macro, used to assist with detecting logical errors and other types of bugs in debugging versions of a program. My version of `assert` will just be a signal to the compiler that the value being `false` would be undefined behavior, for performance.

See also

References
  1. "Man Jeuk (2008) - Box Office". IMDb. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  2. "Man Jeuk (Sparrow) (2008)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  3. Johnnie To on "Mad Detective" Archived 29 July 2008 at the Wayback Machine

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