Eternity - Elliot Travers (2013) - Queen's Road Central

A flashback scene, showing us how Manning's wife (Amy Tsang) was desperately against him entering the "Transference" program, was shot on Queen's Road Central. A hundred metres or so up from the junction with Pedder Street. There is also a later shot of him and family walking along next to the junction with Wyndham Street (last image below).

Eternity - Elliot Travers (2013) - Central Piers

This next film is another story that shares common ground with the recently looked at Expired. Both are low-budget, antipodean sci-fi productions that use Hong Kong for its "futuristic" ambience but you end up wondering why they bothered coming here given the general use of not-particularly futuristic locations. Of course, that might just be my perception of Hong Kong from living here for 20+ years.

This film is about a detective, Richard Manning (Elliot Travers) who inadvertantly messes up a case when a hacker he is interrogating commits suicide right in front of him. To make up for his mistake, Manning is given the opportunity (along with a bunch of other peeps in similar circumstances) to partake in "Transference": a cutting edge technology that allows the user to be beamed into a computer simulation in order to solve a crime. The winner, the first one to solve it, is released from the computer simulation and can continue their career. The losers must remain. Although it doesn't mention what happens after. Once inside, however, a virus takes over the system causing it to endlessly loop and the only escape is to solve the crime before the next memory wipe and reboot!

The story is marred by extremely poor acting, and a script trying to be far too clever for its own good. You do wonder, like with Expired, why the crew bothered coming to Hong Kong to film when it features so little and adds nothing to the story. Far better are the New Zealand locations which, I believe, include the Two Paddocks wine estate of the recently late, and very great, Sam Neill (R.I.P).

Anyway, the opening scene starts with the botched interrogation and the police are operating out of an unnamed futuristic city that Hong Kong provides the backdrop for. This view looks to be the one from the (currently closed) walkway that connected the IFC Mall with the ferry piers. It's currently decommissioned as another architecturally-dubious mall development - Central Yards - is constructed along the waterfront.

Double Dhamaal - Sanjay Dutt (2011) - Aberdeen Marina

The next con the gang try to do is to pretend one of them is a rich investor who rocks up to the casino and demands the valet park his boat. The shot we are shown is a view across the marina next to the Aberdeen Marina Club - most likely shot from the Shum Wan Pier Drive area where the floating restaurant pontoons were located - and not, as the editing tries to convince us, outside the casino in Macau. 

Double Dhamaal - Sanjay Dutt (2011) - Central Piers, Hong Kong

Back to Hong Kong as the four discuss their plans to trick Kabir as they vent and fume at the public piers next to Central Piers. From the images it looks like they are standing next to Pier 9 with Pier 10 in the background.

Double Dhamaal - Sanjay Dutt (2011) - Hong Kong Exhibition Centre, Wanchai

After jumping from the boat to escape the police, the four men reach the waterfront next to the Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Double Dhamaal - Sanjay Dutt (2011) - Victoria Harbour

This next movie, Double Dhamaal, is a Hindi language Indian comedy movie (and sequel to 2007's Dhamaal) about four conmen (played by Ritesh Deshmukh, Arshad Warsi, Aashish Chaudhary, and Javed Jaffrey) who try to con Kabir (Sanjay Dutt) out of his fortune. About half of the film appears to be set in India, but when Kabir absconds with some ill-gotten gains, he flees to Macau where he has just bought one of the casinos. "Macau" is a mixture of both Macau proper and a few shots in and around Hong Kong.

As an illustration, the first scene in "Macau" is actually Victoria Harbour where the four conmen are riding on a junk.

No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas - Verónica Echegui (2016) - View over Wanchai

The last shot for this film, before the story returns to Spain, is this nice view across the Wanchai rooftops. The Hopewell Centre on the left and Central Plaza still dominating the skyline in this area.

No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas - Verónica Echegui (2016) - Harcourt Road, Central

Another footbridge, this time a bit further west, back towards Central, this is the footbridge that connects Harcourt Garden with Tim Mei Avenue and the CITIC Tower near Admiralty station. It's been a while since I was down here because much of the last ten years the place was closed as they constructed the East Rail line extension stations at Admiralty (yes, the old KCR blue line from Lo Wu now goes all the way into Admiralty).

No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas - Verónica Echegui (2016) - Gloucester Road, Wanchai

The last few posts are just general shots around the area. This one is of the pedestrian walkway across Gloucester Road where it intersects with O'Brien Road. A familiar walk for anyone who had to make the traipse to the Immigration Department when it was still based here (we've all had to make that walk on multiple occasions as immigrants into Hong Kong).

No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas - Verónica Echegui (2016) - Sheung Wan View

After leaving hospital, Sara convalesces in a hotel. The view is from what was the Holiday Inn Express which has since been rebranded as a Hilton Motto. The view is from there but it looks to me as though, for the second image, it's most likely a studio shot with a back projection. The reason being is that the curved window seems to be out of place. It's just my opinion though. The entrance to the hotel is on Jervois Street.

No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas - Verónica Echegui (2016) - Hennessy Road, Causeway Bay

Some more general shots of Hong Kong as Sara is taken to hospital. This one shows the view looking west along Hennessy Road towards the Canal Road Flyover. The shot was obtained by putting the camera on the pedestrian walkway that links the two sides of Percival Street.

No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas - Verónica Echegui (2016) - Chun Yeung Street, North Point

After feeling ill on the minbus (anyone who has ridden on a red minibus in Hong Kong can empathise), Sara gets off and the pair walk along the street as she feels increasingly ill. She then collapses. This was all filmed along Chun Yeung Street (春秧街) in North Point. It's one of those streets pushed by the HK Tourism Board for being a bit quaint. The street has a local wet market whose stalls are located right next to the North Point tram terminus. I think the tourism board wants to pretend this street market is like those ones you see in Vietnam or Thailand where everyone has to move their stalls when the train breezes through (Narrator: it's not).

No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas - Verónica Echegui (2016) - Statue Square, Central

As the pair make their way across town, we get a brief glimpse of the skyscrapers around Statue Square in Central. From left to right we have the Bank of China Tower, Cheung Kong Centre, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank and on the far right, the Prince's Building. 
 

No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas - Verónica Echegui (2016) - Pottinger Street, Central

Another of the location seen on their route home is the lower section of Pottinger Street just up from Queen's Road Central.

No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas - Verónica Echegui (2016) - D'Aguilar Street, Central

The pair head back to his apartment via D'Aguilar Street. This is a view of D'Aguilar Street from the lower (northern) Queen's Road Central-end looking up the hill.

No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas - Verónica Echegui (2016) - Hennessy Road, Causeway Bay

After being lost for a bit, Sara finally manages to meet her boyfriend on the pavement where Hennessy Road meets Yee Wo Street and Jardine's Bazaar. Quite the leap from Mongkok.

No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas - Verónica Echegui (2016) - View from the Peak Viewing Tower

The first Spanish entry for the blog comes in the form of No culpes al karma de lo que te pasa por gilipollas (Eng: Don't Blame it on your Karma), a romantic comedy starring Verónica Echegui as Sara, a girl whose world gets very complicated when a horde of people suddenly descend on her apartment in Madrid. I am familar with some of the actors courtesy of recently watching some Spanish language dramas on Netflix. Echegui was in Ciudad de sombras (City of Shadows) a murder mystery set in Barcelona and her co-star (and partner at the time) Álex García is in the excellent The Glass Cuckoo (El cuco de cristal). The only sad thing about all this is the fact that Echegui passed away last August (2025) from cancer at the very young age of 42.

Most of the film was shot in Madrid, but during the last third she goes to visit her boyfriend in Hong Kong and the establishing shots are some views from Victoria Peak, most likely from the Peak Viewing Tower given the angle. You can compare the angle with this one in The Gray Man. It's exactly the same. The second image is a close up (of Wanchai area) of the section on the right in the first image.

Daddy Cool - Mammootty (2009) - Central Waterfront

Some scenes were also shot in front of the IFC mall on the Central Waterfront.

Daddy Cool - Mammootty (2009) - Stanley

Next up and father and son head along the waterfront in Stanley. Once a rather bustling area Stanley's fortunes have fallen significantly in recent years. I last went about 2 years ago and the place was dead. It just doesn't seem to have recovered from the COVID years.

The whole musical sequence is a bit choppy so we get views of multiple places in a quick succession of edits. The lower images are from a later part when the pair are out on a boat, but it looks like this was filmed in Stanley Bay. And later still they are back on land hanging around on the reconstructed Blake Pier.

Daddy Cool - Mammootty (2009) - Victoria Harbour

Adding to my growing list of Indian productions shot in Hong Kong is Daddy Cool, a Malayalam language film released in 2009. It stars Mammootty as a cop who is idolised by his cricket-loving son, but sadly I can't speak any Malayalam, so you might be better off reading the plot summary found on Wikipedia. The film was largely shot in India and it appears that the Hong Kong section was just the setting for one of the musical numbers. That said, they managed to squeeze quite a few places into that 10 minute-or-so segment. If you want to watch it, you can find it on Youtube.