Good cop, bad cop: New twist

[news]

Good cop, bad cop: New twist
By LIZA BEAR
DAILY NEWS WRITER

Friend or faux?: In 'Infernal Affairs," Andy Lau (left) and Tony Leung (right) struggle for the upper hand in Hong Kong's world of organized crime.

In the mind-bending Hong Kong psychological thriller 'Infernal Affairs," Yan (Tony Leung) is a faux gangster who's really a cop working undercover in the Triads, the Hong Kong version of the Mafia. His opposite is Ming (Andy Lau), a fake cop trained in the Police Academy who's really a Triad gangster, driven by ambition and now rapidly scaling ranks in the police force.
The stylish tale of divided loyalties, which opens Friday, has attracted an extra measure of attention because it has already been picked for a high-profile Hollywood remake — set in Boston with Martin Scorsese directing Leonardo DiCaprio as the undercover cop and Matt Damon as the mob mole.

'Infernal Affairs" has one more double bill, co-directors Alan Lak and Andrew Lau.

'We tried to divide up the directing beforehand but couldn't," said Lak. 'So we just went to the set and let it happen."

'I'm lazy and didn't want to talk," said Lau. 'So I let Alan talk to the actors while I set up the camera and the lights." Lau's dazzling settings are big on rooftops and reflections.

'Besides, we're very different people," Lau said. 'I'm impatient and like to work very fast. Alan is more patient. So we balance each other out."

Unlike the traditional Hong Kong genre film — in which fists and bullets dominate the action — Lak and Lau stressed the psychological predicament of the characters in their own private hells. The Chinese name for the movie, 'Mo-Gaan-do," means 'continuous hell," the lowest type of hell in Buddhism.

When a drug transaction and a drug bust go awry, both the Triads and the police realize they have been infiltrated. The moles are assigned to ferret out each other in a war of nerves.

'We wanted to put our eyes on the drama and the actors," Lak said. 'Box-office returns show that audiences are tired of fast action films.

That's why I have details about character motivation, how the moles became who they are and what they face in the future."

In real life, the inner world of the undercover cop is notoriously hard to penetrate. But Lak, who spent three years writing the script, didn't have to go far for his research. He drew on his childhood memories. His father and eldest brother are policemen and as a youngster he lived in police quarters.

'I heard many stories from my father about some of his guys who had disappeared from the police force," said Lak. 'That's because they were going undercover. ... And when they finish their work and come back to the police force, after as much as 10 years undercover, they are not happy."

The uncertainty about who knows what, and when, and what they'll do about it, is not resolved until the final shot.

'The end was the most difficult scene to shoot," said Lau. 'In Alan's script there was a fighting scene between Tony and Andy on the roof. But I was convinced that I just wanted pure tension, no fighting.

'We shot five endings. In some, both die; in others, neither of them are dead and they become friends. And for mainland China we changed it again."

Originally published on September 21, 2004
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/story/234471p-201378c.html

[Tony Grrl]

[news]

I, too, want to find out what the other three endings are. Wise choice. No fighting rather replaced with pure tension, which in my opinion is more compelling. One complaint though: movie is bit short (1 hour 37 minutes)