Breaking News 2004

The Hong Kong Police face a damaging public relations crisis after a disastrous shootout and a surrender scene caught on camera and broadcast by the media. The incident unsettles the city, and the force must respond not just with force but with image. Inspector Cheung Chi Hang, [Nick Cheung Ka-Fai], leads his team on a determined pursuit of the mobsters, a crew framed around the cunning and capable Yuan. The investigation is complicated by competing pressures inside the police command, and the drama broadens as Superintendent Rebecca Fong, [Kelly Chen], pushes a calculated propaganda strategy to salvage the department’s reputation while pushing a legitimate crackdown at the same time. The clash between hard policing and media manipulation sets the tone for a tense, high-stakes confrontation.

As the two sides converge on a suspected hideout, gunfire erupts in the apartment complex where the mobsters are holed up. In the chaos, Yuan inadvertently frees the killer Cheung Chun, [You Yongzhi], along with his accomplices, and the two sides begin to maneuver through a dangerous game of bluff and counter-bluff. Yuan and Fong marshal the media as a weapon, turning public attention into a battleground where perception can be almost as lethal as bullets. The attackers and defenders alike trade blows as the police attempt to evacuate residents and prevent a deeper escalation.

Yuan and Chun seize the moment to sow chaos, forcing a brutal showdown with the retreating police. In the streets and stairwells, the lines between hunter and hunted blur, and Cheung Chi Hang and Fong stay hot on Yuan’s trail, supported by a network of officers including Vincent Chan Yuk-Sing and others who keep pace with the unfolding crisis. When Yuan captures Fong as a hostage and carries her toward the point where Chun plans an assassination, the chase becomes personal and perilous. Cheung and the rest of the squad close in, tracing Fong’s signals and cutting off the would-be hit, making the target’s death the price of the attackers’ miscalculation. Fong stands firm, determined not to let the spectacle derail the pursuit, and Yuan, recognizing the inevitability of defeat, is fatally shot by the police.

In the aftermath, Cheung and Fong are publicly hailed as the heroes of a difficult operation, their leadership framed as a necessary damaged-brand victory that restored some measure of public trust. The narrative closes with a grim coda: Chun, occupying Yuan’s role in a daring hijack of a cash withdrawal vehicle, is pursued to his end and is shot dead, underscoring the film’s throughline that the line between show and reality is perilously thin, and that justice—though costly—still finds a way to assert itself.