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INFERNAL AFFAIRS III (PG)An affair to forget
Too many gun shots, too many cross references to the earlier parts of this trilogy. Thank heavens for Tony Leung Chiu Wai

By Foong Woei Wan

IT'S impossible to accuse directing duo Andrew Lau and Alan Mak of a lack of ambition.

Last year, they had the guts to go for a high-concept narrative instead of a high body count in their crime hit, Infernal Affairs.

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It told a yin-yang tale of a cop working undercover in a triad (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and a mole toiling in the police department (Andy Lau).

Two months ago, the directors put out a prequel, Infernal Affairs II, where they tried to out-epic The Godfather II - the granddaddy of gangster films - by cranking up the mafia melodrama.

Infernal Affairs III is the sequel to the first film and sees them maybe at their most daring: challenging the conventions of sequel-making and testing the patience of the movie-going public.

As a rule, when a man dies in a movie, it means you will not see the actor in the sequel. As another rule, events in a sequel tend to happen after, and not before, those in the original.

Not with directors Lau and Mak, however.

At the end of the first film, three of the four leads - Leung's cop Yan, Eric Tsang's crime chief Sum and Anthony Wong's Superintendent Wong - were dead. The last man standing was Andy Lau's mole, Ming.

But the sequel brings all four back, and adds two more players: Yeung (Leon Lai, below), a powerful policeman who might have triad ties and Shen (Chen Daoming), a limping gangland leader.

There are two interlocking stories here. One has Ming getting into a cat-and-mouse game with Yeung and Shen. The other is a flashback of how Yan ran into Yeung and Shen before dying, while making time to flirt with a pretty psychiatrist (Kelly Chen).

So, the movie moves back and forth in time without warning, because you are meant to keep guessing about Yeung and Shen's intentions - along with Ming and Yan.

After the initial confusion, the storytelling trick actually works fairly well.

The problem is in the pay-off, which comes as a triple whammy of an ending.

There are guns going off, a romantic denouement as well as heavy-handed references to the previous movies.

The directors try so hard to end the trilogy with several bangs that, alas, it goes out with a whimper instead.

The cast boasts six award-winning actors - Leung, Andy Lau, Tsang, Wong, Lai and Chen Daoming - which may be too much of a good thing.

Veterans Tsang, Wong and Chen are under-used here. Lai seems to do no more than wear glasses and glower. Lau attempts to emote, but as in the first film, it is Leung who steals the show.

He was all soulful torment there, as a good guy trapped by the triads.

Here, with his character's fate sealed, he is just having fun in the flashback, and puts in a relaxed, romantically-charged performance.

He is the only thing that makes this movie an affair to remember.
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/showbiz/reviews/0,5348,224567,00.html

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Published on TaipeiTimes
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2003/12/12/2003079331
The end of the affair

The final part of the Infernal Affair's trilogy ends with a bang rather than a whimper
By Charles Leary
CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
Friday, Dec 12, 2003,Page 20

A word of warning: If you haven't seen the first Infernal Affairs, the highly anticipated sequel Infernal Affairs III, opening today, will be especially confusing. If you have seen the original and the prequel Infernal Affairs II, it will still be confusing, but worth trying to make sense of. The contemporary police/gangster film Infernal Affairs centers around two duplicitous characters. Andy Lau (劉德華) plays Ming, a triad mole sent to infiltrate the Hong Kong police force; Tony Leung (粱朝偉) plays Yan, a cop deep undercover in the triad underworld. Infernal Affairs II, released just last month, depicts the recruitment of these two as young men while revealing the equally duplicitous nature of their respective elders: Superintendent Wong, played by Anthony Wong (黃秋生), and the triad boss Sam, played by Eric Tsang (曾志偉).

This third and final installment of Hong Kong's most ambitious blockbuster franchise takes place a year after the period of this first film with equal time given to flashbacks taking place a few years prior. The abundant flashbacks allow filmmakers Andrew Lau (劉偉強) and Alan Mak (麥兆輝) filmmakers to bring back three big stars (Leung, Wong, and Tsang) even though all of their characters died in the first film. One of the major reasons for the first film's success was its surplus of big-name stars. Numerous explicit references to The Godfather Trilogy, Part II introduced the epic aspirations of Infernal Affairs, bringing in more stars for more major characters. Part III ups the ante even further, and accommodating the demands of these new characters is primarily what makes the third installment difficult to follow.

Film Notes
Internal AffairsIII
Directed By: Stephen Daldry
Starring: Andy Lau, Tony Leung, Leon Lai, Eric Tsang, Anthony Wong, Chen Daoming, Kelly Chen, and Chapman To
Running Time: 110 Minutes
Taiwan Release: Today

Aside from a bigger role for rising star Chapman To (杜文澤), the new faces in Infernal Affairs III include last year's Golden Horse Award-winner Leon Lai (黎明) and respected Chinese actor Chen Daoming (陳道明). Lai plays Yeung, the cold-hearted and apprehensive police executive. Chen -- the best actior in Zhang Yimou's (張藝謀) martial arts epic from last year, Hero, in the role of China's first Emperor, plays Shen -- is a Chinese businessman involved in arms smuggling with Sam while also conspiring with Yeung. As he did in Hero, Chen steals every scene he is in here -- even though his character is the least explained and most confusing part of the film.

In the first film, Ming was promoted to the Internal Affairs division to find the triad mole (actually himself) and Part III begins with a committee exonerating him for the bloodshed that left Yan, Superintendent Wong, and another triad mole dead. His next assignment is to continue searching for a triad mole, who has been covering his tracks by systematically executing other moles on the force. Yeung, who holds clandestine meetings with both Shen and Sam, becomes the target of the IA investigation, with, of course, a strong possibility remaining that the guilty party is Ming himself, even though he longs to become a "good guy."

But the daily suppression of his corrupt past finally proves too much for Ming, and a dominant narrative strand in Part III is his gradual psychological breakdown. We were offered a glimpse into his pathology in the prequel, when the young Ming covets his surrogate mother (Carina Lau, 劉嘉玲) and, in a twist on the usual Oedipal narrative, also has her killed. His madness becomes visualized in hallucinations, evoking more appearances by Leung, as Ming convinces himself that he is also a good guy forced to be bad.

The psychological drama dovetails with more details of Yan's story, revisiting his therapy sessions with Dr. Lee, played by pop star Kelly Chen (陳慧琳). But this part of the film seems rather contrived, especially with the desperate suggestion of a romance plot between doctor and patient. In a sappy portrayal of the psychiatric profession, we're privy to lengthy sessions of Dr. Lee weeping for the slain Yan. Add Chen's amateur acting skills, and the only relief in these scenes is the always brilliant comic charm of Leung.

The film returns to the sleek visual style of the first movie, accentuating a sense of post-industrial Hong Kong in the decor of the police headquarters. But with the introduction of a few Mandarin speaking Chinese characters, as well as references to Taiwanese repatriates and arms dealers, this epic also suggests the growth of a greater China. A huge window in Yeung's executive office looks out on Victoria Harbor, its view limited to ships and cranes without showing Hong Kong's recognizable skyline. And so when a Chinese freighter slowly creeps by in the background, coincidently at a crucial climactic moment, we might think we are in Shanghai's Pudong district or the Pearl River Delta. Gone are those good old days from Part II of a freewheeling, colorful Hong Kong.

After all, as Shen tells a recession-weary Sam flirting with the Chinese market, a Hong Kong gangster will never outlive a Chinese businessman.

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