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Infernal Affairs (Variety, 2002/2003)

 
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Sandy
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 12:50 am    Post subject: Infernal Affairs (Variety, 2002/2003) Reply with quote

Infernal Affairs III

By Bryan Walsh Monday, Dec. 22, 2003

Time Magazine




http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,561520,00.html

When it comes to movies, three is rarely the charm. The final segments of film trilogies have brought us the now Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger attempting to joke (T3: Rise of the Machines), Sofia Coppola attempting to emote (The Godfather Part III) and, most terrible of all, the Ewoks (The Return of the Jedi). This year has already seen the third and hopefully final Matrix film vanish faster than Carrie-Anne Moss's career, although nothing is likely to stop the last Lord of the Rings when it sweeps across cinemas like an army of ravaging orcs. In between comes Hong Kong's own Infernal Affairs III (IA3), the final chapter of the taut cops-and-triads, cat-and-mouse series that first broke box-office records last December. Can the last Infernal Affairs escape the curse of three?

Maybe trilogies only work for Tolkien. Though it remains visually stylish and features several excellent performances from some of Hong Kong's most versatile stars, IA3 sags under a load of familiar third-act baggage. Too little story spread over too much movie? Check. Total narrative bafflement for those who haven't dissected the first two films? Check. An unshakable sense of fatigue for the directors and audience alike? Double check. Even without the furry merchandising gimmicks, IA3 is more Return of the Jedi than Return of the King.

For those who missed the first IA or failed to take detailed notes of it, a little primer is in order. Ming (Andy Lau) is a triad spy who infiltrates the police force, while Yan (an unusually harried Tony Leung) is a cop under cover with the triads. Each tries to root out the other during the compact, brutally tense first film; Ming, who likes working with the good guys so much that he wants to sever all of his criminal ties, blows away Yan, and walks away scot-free. (Not in the mainland China version, however. Nervous censors there forced a last-minute change that has Ming inexplicably arrested, thus removing any troublesome moral ambiguity.)

Fans of the first film might be surprised to see Leung co-starring in IA3 along with stalwart police chief Wong (Anthony Wong) and triad boss Sam (Eric Tsang), since all three were dead by the end of the original. But IA3 directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak solve that potential casting problem by shifting the third film back and forth in time, a few months before the first IA and a few months after its end, when a seemingly free-and-clear Ming rejoins the cops. With Yan, Wong and Sam shimmering across the screen like walking phantoms, IA3 begins to take on the atmosphere of a ghost story, an impression that is reinforced when paranoid Ming starts seeing what seem like actual ghosts. Is he going nuts—or is he just confused, like much of the audience?

A close-cropped Andy Lau plays Ming as a man slowly discovering his own hollowness, but Leung's Yan, all nerves and charm, steals the film again, while Tsang and Wong shine in their brief appearances. Newcomers Leon Lai, as a possibly dirty cop, and mainlander Chen Daoming, as an imperially cold smuggler, fit seamlessly into the action. Only Kelly Chen, as the psychiatrist who connects Ming and Yan, falls flat.

The success of the first two IA movies showed that Hong Kong's commercial filmmakers, given time and money, could create works that combined the stylishness and spirit of local cinema with the polish and ambition of Hollywood. That energy fizzles out in IA3, but cinematically speaking, two out of three ain't bad.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,561520,00.html#ixzz2MN2HtTqw


Last edited by Sandy on Wed Jun 04, 2014 10:57 pm; edited 2 times in total
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 12:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

An Affair to Remember

By Bryan Walsh Monday, Sept. 29, 2003

Time Magazine


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,490737,00.html

Edison Chen doesn't much resemble Robert De Niro. Maybe it's the oversize aviator sunglasses, the spiky haircut or the fact that he's a 22-year-old Canto-pop idol. But as Chen strides down the claustrophobic hallways of a Hong Kong tenement in the opening scenes of Infernal Affairs II (IA2), there's a whiff of De Niro menace—especially when Chen, his gun concealed in an envelope, shoots an elderly crime boss through a doorway grill in a brutal, abrupt hit. The shot is a conspicuous reference to De Niro's first murder in Godfather II, and it stakes the ground for IA2's epic—and violent—aspirations.

When the original Infernal Affairs came out last December, it took the box office by storm, providing a welcome jolt for Hong Kong's moribund movie industry. The tight, tense cop thriller showcased two of Hong Kong's top actors as a pair of dueling moles: corrupt police inspector Ming (Andy Lau), informing for a criminal gang; and Yan (Tony Leung), an undercover cop who had infiltrated the same triads. Infernal Affairs raised the bar for what a Hong Kong film could be, and its commercial success guaranteed sequels—a slight problem given that most of the cast is killed off in the original. Instead, co-directors Alan Mak and Andrew Lau decided to go prequel for the first sequel (the third film will take place after the original), bringing on inexperienced actors/idols Edison Chen and Shawn Yue to play young versions of Ming and Yan, respectively. The co-directors also abandoned the rigidly structured cat-and-mouse formula that gave the original its paranoid charge, opting to create a sprawling crime epic of family, loyalty and betrayal. That's the kind of Godfather territory Hong Kong's run-of-the-mill triad flicks rarely tread. "We knew we had the chance to do something really different and great, so we took it," says director Lau. "But there's a lot of pressure because if the second one doesn't do well, forget about the third."

It works. IA2 is messy around the edges and constantly in danger of collapsing under the weight of its operatic ambition, but it pulls through. Bereft of their original headliners, the directors wisely don't ask too much of Chen and Yue, keeping their characters to the periphery—although by the end of the film Yue has managed to capture some of Tony Leung's moral queasiness while Chen assumes a bit of Andy Lau's cold-blooded charm. The focus is on the grownups: Anthony Wong's borderline-rogue police inspector; and Eric Tsang's joyful triad tough, who goes from being a naive mid-level criminal to a malevolent little (and powerful) toad, willing to whack any and all enemies. Given room to act by a story that stresses character rather than plot, both add depth to their memorable performances in the original.

Like any good sequel, IA2 cranks up the violence and the gore by several notches, and the film's murky visuals are a deliberate counterpoint to the original's silver-skinned crispness. That makes sense—IA2 muddies the moral waters until no one, cop or triad, escapes without some implication in its cycle of violence and death. Who knew that a Hong Kong cop flick could offer such a subtle pleasure as moral complexity?

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,490737,00.html#ixzz2MN2bbmHh
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 1:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

“Infernal Affairs”

This Hong Kong hit from 2002, starring Andy Lau and Tony Leung and just now being released here, is one of the truest American gangster films of all time.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Friday, Sep 24, 2004 01:00 PM PDT



http://www.salon.com/2004/09/24/infernal_affairs/

The Hong Kong hit “Infernal Affairs” — a picture made in 2002 by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak that’s just now reaching these shores — is one of the truest American gangster films of all time. Although Hollywood churns out a a new cop thriller just about every other week, we’ve forgotten how to make true gangster films, a genre we consider quintessentially American to the point where we feel we no longer have to work at it.

No matter how many times filmmakers from other countries — from Jean-Luc Godard to John Woo — have grabbed the gangster film away from us and returned it to us, reinvented and reinvigorated, we continue to be lax in rising to the bait. There have been notable exceptions (within the last 11 years or so, “Carlito’s Way” and “Donnie Brasco,” to name two). But even though many of our cop thrillers feature gangsters of one sort or another (and even though they often make big money, worldwide), so many of these pictures clump together into a generically dull ball. It’s gotten to the point where we need Hong Kong to remind America who it is.

“Infernal Affairs” just does that. Lau (Andy Lau) is a Hong Kong cop assigned to find a mole in his department: The traitor, whoever he is, has been feeding information to a powerful gangster outfit led by a beefy thug named Sam (Eric Tsang). Chan (Tony Leung) is an undercover cop who has been working with Sam’s gang for years — the only person who knows his true identity is his boss, Wong (Anthony Wong). The twist is that Lau is the mole (a plot detail that’s revealed early in the picture, so no spoiler alert required).

The setup — a good guy pretends to be a bad one, while a bad guy masquerades as good — is classic, but what Andrew Lau and Mak do with it makes all the difference. “Infernal Affairs” takes many of its cues from American cop movies like Michael Mann’s “Heat”: The story is cut together from stylish shards that are distinctly Mannish, and even its daytime scenes have that desolate city-at-twilight feel, a vibe that Mann has been so adept at capturing. (The picture’s cinematographers are Lai Yiu Fi and Andrew Lau. And to clear up any potential confusion: Andy Lau, the movie’s star, is no relation to the movie’s director. But the director and the cinematographer are indeed the same person.)

But while one of the great pleasures of watching “Infernal Affairs” lies in seeing how Andrew Lau and Mak use stylistic, compact dots and dashes to fill in the myriad details of the complicated story (smartly written by Felix Chong and Mak), the heart of the picture is the shadowy relationship, and contrast between, its two main characters, Chan and Lau. If you’re already seeing visions of that blinking neon sign spelling out “Duality!” don’t run away just yet. For my money, the concept of duality is the biggest yawn in movies. I suspect that, at least as far as it’s been explored in the movies, the idea that two characters are very different on the surface yet — get this! — actually very similar deep down was invented by and for movie critics to show how smart they think they are.

There’s no phony duality setup — no brothers-under-the-skin crapola — in “Infernal Affairs.” Although both Chan and Lau are cops, they’re distinct versions of very different things, and the movie never lets us forget it. Andy Lau’s Detective Lau wears narrow, trimly tailored suits, and his gait is so elegantly studied that it actually appears relaxed. Lau, as a bad guy in cop’s clothing, would wear impeccably tailored suits as part of his disguise.

But Andy Lau’s performance is so tightly controlled that it fits into that suit with room to spare. His character is almost shockingly cool — we never see him ruffled, at least until close to the movie’s end. Andy Lau never does anything obvious to telegraph the turmoil shivering beneath the surface of his character. Yet somehow, we never have any doubt that it’s there.

Lau has the face of a grave elf. In scene after scene and shot after shot, we see him taking in information, processing it, filing it in the appropriate mental slot so he’ll know how to use it later. But even though Detective Lau is an almost placidly still character (in fact, “Infernal Affairs” has very few shootouts and relatively little graphic violence; it builds all the excitement it needs through simple suspense), he gives off the sense of being constantly on the run. There’s something distressingly unsettled about him — it’s as if the whole performance were inspired by the fierce but barely perceptible beating of an insect’s wings.

But as terrific as Andy Lau is, “Infernal Affairs” is Leung’s movie. Audiences with even a cursory familiarity with Hong Kong movies — from John Woo’s “Hard Boiled” and “A Bullet in the Head” to Wong Kar-Wai’s “Chungking Express” and In the Mood for Love” to Zhang Yimou’s justifiably exalted “Hero” — will probably recognize Leung’s face. Leung has been one of my favorite Hong Kong actors for years, and his performance here is one of the finest I’ve ever seen him give. His Chan has been working undercover for some 10 years. When he meets with Wong, who seems to be his only friend, he transmits the weight of his burden without exactly spelling it out. He’s exhausted and despairing not because he lives a dual life, but because he lives only one: No one but Wong and, later, the police psychiatrist he flirts with in a few duskily muted romantic scenes, knows he’s a cop. Everyone who knows him, knows him as a gangster, and he barely knows himself anymore.

Leung explains all of that with a few lines, but he tells us even more with his carriage (there are hints of physical exhaustion beneath its raffishness) and with the nearly drained-dry glimmering darkness of his eyes. As with Lau, all of Chan’s despair is internal. He shields it from the world, as if it were a fragile creature that needed to be protected — and it does, because it’s the only thing that makes him feel human.

Leung’s finest moment comes when Chan runs into an old girlfriend on the street, a woman he hasn’t seen in six years. She has a little girl with her, her daughter. The two make awkward, emotionally charged chitchat for a few minutes. Chan asks the woman how old her little girl is; she tells him she’s 5. After Chan walks away, the little girl tugs on her mother’s sleeve and reminds her emphatically that she’s 6. In other words, she’s Chan’s child.

That’s the kind of moment that we might laugh at if we saw it, hamfistedly executed, in an American movie. But the scene is played with such weightless tenderness that it works. Hong Kong action films are often marked by a certain kind of sentimentality that “sophisticated” American audiences often find corny. And even “Infernal Affairs” has a few moments where string music swells beyond what we may feel comfortable with. Yet that music suits the tenor of the scene in which it’s used — it’s one of the most deeply emotional moments in the picture, and it’s fitting that it should be enveloped in an operatic bubble.

Andrew Lau and Mak keep most of “Infernal Affairs” so dry and taut that when they succumb to deep emotion, it actually means something. Chan and Detective Lau don’t meet face-to-face until late in the movie, which means that through most of the story, their relationship is simply implied. Even so, it’s always the center of the film, the unbreakable knot around which the whole thing revolves.

The themes of honor and loyalty, those old workhorses that pull many of the great gangster movies (Asian and American ones alike), are present here, but Lau and Mak skate around them lightly. The truer theme of “Infernal Affairs” is that brotherhood often has finite limits; a state of isolation is in some ways preferable — at least you always know whom you’re dealing with.

“Infernal Affairs” works as both a piece of entertainment and a solid genre exercise. But like the best of its kind, there’s enough going on beneath the surface to stay with you. (Its fans will be happy to know that two sequels, one of them actually a prequel, have already been made.) “Infernal Affairs” also inspires us to ask ourselves what, aside from the country of origin, makes a picture distinctly “Asian” or “American”? There’s no simple way to answer that question, but the simple truth is that “Infernal Affairs” gives us the best of both worlds.

Stephanie Zacharek is a senior writer for Salon Arts & Entertainment.


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PostPosted: Sat Mar 02, 2013 1:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Films of the decade: The “Infernal Affairs” trilogy

Seductive gangster fables of false freedom -- with noir roots and a Buddhist subtext

By Martha P. Nochimson

Monday, Dec 21, 2009 09:44 AM PST

http://www.salon.com/2009/12/21/nochimson/

A few years ago I arrived in Hong Kong via North Jersey. David Chase’s piercing portrait of Tony Soprano had opened my eyes to the way the American gangster genre uncovers the misrecognition of freedom, by some in this great land, as the entitlement to indulge in reckless submission to the blind flow of energy toward desire. And I was pondering how our media gangsters work as metaphors for that most American perversion, the “faux-freedom junkie.” (Yoo-hoo, Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck!) Suddenly I found myself at the door of a trilogy directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak: “Infernal Affairs” (2002), “Infernal Affairs II” (2003) and “Infernal Affairs III” (also 2003). Although they’re genuine Hong Kong movies complete with a Buddhist subtext, these three surprisingly manifested a spirit kindred to American gangster flicks as they told and retold the interlocking stories of Yan (Tony Leung), a police mole inside a Triad organization, and Ming (Andy Lau), a member of that same Triad gang who has infiltrated the Hong Kong police.

Before my dazzled gaze, with each film the seductions of gangster life became clearer, as did the price paid for orgiastic immersion in faux gangster “freedom.” At each turn of the trilogy I saw the characters’ holds on reality thin toward the breaking point, as the stories revealed faux-freedom as the death of sanity and balance. Particularly crucial is the murder in the first film of Police Inspector Wong Chi Shing (Anthony Wong). Only he knows that Yan is a mole and not a Triad gangster, and only he is proof against contamination by gangster excesses. His grounding presence and traumatic absence, once he is killed by Triad boss Sam (Eric Tsang), is recapitulated with increasing dread in the next two films. This incandescent portrait of individual striving gone wrong continues to move and awe me. What a disappointment to see the usually brilliant Martin Scorsese turn it into the shriveled remains of a punctured balloon in his 2006 remake, “The Departed.” But what a thrill to see an American mythology through the eyes of Lau and Mak.

Film Salon has invited a group of special guests to write about their favorite film(s) of the 2000s. To read the entire series, go here.
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