This 2002 Hong Kong action thriller looked insane, it looked chaotic, it looked fun, and it looked really familiar.
I’d heard little about Infernal Affairs before I decided to finally move it from my to-watch list on Netflix to my watched list on Letterboxd, but what I had heard about the film was that it is the origin story that inspired Martin Scorsese’s 2006 blockbuster The Departed. The 2002 crime action thriller by Hong Kong directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak may be forever affiliated by western viewers with its proceeding Hollywood adaption, transported from the city of Hong Kong to the streets of Boston, but Infernal Affairs is a film that belongs with its own spotlight.
Staring Andy Lau, Tony Leung and Eric Tsang, the film follows the game of cat and mouse that ensues between the police and the drug-trafficking gang that rules the city. With double-agents on both sides of the law, the intricacies of the dichotomy of bad and good is explored through the undercover police officer posing as a gang member, Chang Wing-yan (Tony Leung) and the gang member posing as an authoritative police officer, Lua Kin-ming (Andy Lau).
When it comes to adaptions, especially film-to-film adaptions, viewers can be quick to play a game of comparison even if the players follow entirely different sets of rules. I’m hesitant to participate in this dialogue of one-better-than-the-other because it flattens the extensive and harrowing process of adaption to a simple competition of opinion. Infernal Affairs and The Departed are films spurned in essence from the same story, but through a shift in cultural contexts, in cinematic choices, in inspiration of traditions, and in just pure storytelling, these films exist as entirely different stories.
Where one can expect the refined glamour of Hollywood actors and the quick-witted dialogue of Martin Scorsese, the other can expect an overly dramatic musical score and fast-moving, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it action sequences of the Hong Kong original. From the film’s title, being a comparison between the Internal Affairs unit of the police force and the depths of hell, Infernal Affairs peppers hints and references throughout the chaos and action to the story of power and betrayal that functions beneath the madness of the gangs and police.
Although I was expecting a different experience of movie-watching from the adaption, as you would when you completely shift the cultural context of a story, I was happily surprised to find out that many of the scenes from The Departed that made me think the film was one of wit and humour were directly transported from Infernal Affairs. From one of the earlier scenes when Lua Kin-ming poses as a gang member’s lawyer in an interrogation to uncover sensitive information that is valuable to the police, to one of the final scenes in an elevator that has bullets flying left, right and centre, undercover agents on both sides of the law finally being shed of their performative identities.
The thing I loved most about Infernal Affairs was the dramatics of the dynamics between crime boss Hon Sam, played by Eric Tsang, and the chief of police SP Wong Chi Shing, played by Anthony Wong. Although littered with some amazing action sequences achieved through quick camera work and chaotic editing, this film doesn’t sleep on the cheesy but necessary relationship established with the good guys and the bad guys. Face-to-face in an interrogation room in the police headquarters, Hon Sam and his gang sit all up one side of the desk whilst SP Wong and his force on the other, and although little is said, it’s obvious that one can’t exist without the other. Like that scene in Michael Mann’s film Heat where Al Pacino’s police character buys Robert De Niro’s criminal character a cup of coffee and it becomes clear that they exist as a yin and yang, one can’t work without the other.
Infernal Affairs raises the same problems through this exploration of dichotomy. There are no good guys without the bad, no police without criminals. There is no heaven without hell.
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