You probably know the extent to which Asian cinema has influenced the work of Quentin Tarantino. Proving that the exchange of pop-cultural parts works both ways, Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak’s Infernal Affairs trilogy could be the incestuous syllabus for “The Effects of The Godfather, Michael Mann, Tony Scott, and the American Police Procedural on Asian Cinema.”
Lau Kin-ming (Andy Lau) and Chen Wing-yan (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) attended the same Hong Kong police academy, the former sent there by a drug kingpin, Hon Sam (Eric Tsang), who prefers to cultivate his contacts at the police station. Years later, both Lau and Chen are working as moles—the former as a gangster infiltrating police headquarters and the latter as an officer with a mainline into the triad underground. Naturally, the longer each man works for the other side, the blurrier the lines between good and evil become.
Lau and Mak’s camera is perpetually restless throughout the three films, as is the editing by Danny Pang (co-director of Bangkok Dangerous and The Eye), whose major contribution to their MTV-style aesthetic is eulogizing every death with black-and-white flashback montages set to corny love songs. (That Christopher Doyle served as a “visual consultant” on Infernal Affairs indicates that the film, not unlike its main characters, suffers from an identity crisis.)
To the first film’s credit, the filmmakers seem to realize that the story’s constantly whirring gadgets and gizmos are more dynamic than their actual living-breathing counterparts. The drug bust that opens Infernal Affairs lasts an impressive 30 minutes and is predicated on a complex web of communication between fidgeting bodies, computers, and cellphones—and like the dreamy rooftop sequence that closes the film, it plays out as an opera of sound and image that’s all the more riveting for its virtual absence of human drama.
Pop star Edison Chen and model Shawn Yue Man-lok, who played Lau and Chen via flashbacks in the first Infernal Affairs, reprise their roles in the less show-offy but plottier Infernal Affairs II, but they still play second fiddle to Anthony Wong Chau-sang and Eric Tsang. The film begins with a remarkable sequence between their characters as they discuss morality over Chinese takeout. The moment serves as a startling contrast to a more bitter dinner that the men share in the first film, but it’s an emotionally powerful sequence between the young Chen and a fellow prison inmate who isn’t allowed to go to his father’s funeral that more hauntingly points to the breakdown of common decency in the film’s constricted milieus. From the exploding cars to the cozy outdoor dinner sequences, the film’s debt to The Godfather II is cloying and distracting. If the fall of Batista’s Cuba is the riveting backdrop to Francis Ford Coppola’s film, the handover of Hong Kong to China in Infernal Affairs II scarcely registers.
Infernal Affairs III, released in its native China only a few months after the second film in the trilogy, allows Andy Lau and Tony Leung Chiu Wai to reprise their original roles. With all the good guys gone, there really isn’t anyone to care about in this jumpy, unnecessary sequel. Lau struggles to keep a lid on his identity at the police station, fearing that the ruthless Yeung (Leon Lai) may be gunning for him, while a wasted Leung plays tiddlywinks with Kelly Chen when Wong’s superintendent character advises Lau to get his anger in check.
The more elegant second film is saved by the filmmakers’ claustrophobic use of close-up, which amplifies the haze of nonstop shifting alliances and double-crossings. As overstuffed as the second film and as melodramatic as the first, it lacks the grace of the former and the whiz-bang poetry of the first film’s strongest sequences. Like The Godfather III, it seemingly exists to buff its predecessors’ rough spots but only tarnishes their memories.
Image/Sound
The Cantonese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack for all three films is outstanding, offering dynamic, well-balanced, and intricate soundstages. The images across the set are more variable, which partially attests to the guerilla-style filmmaking, particularly the cinematographers’ propensity for utilizing natural light. The lush images fare best, as they’re colorful and pristine, with a rich and widely varying spectrum of shadows, whereas the brighter exterior shots can be either shrill or sharp as a tack. Such inconsistencies are most apparent in the first Infernal Affairs, which is all the livelier for it, while the third film is the most polished. These restorations make the best of what they have, but they don’t appear to be definitive. The glare and softness of certain images can be hard on the eyes, which, to be fair, has always been the case. But one expects an elevated standard from Criterion—a transcendent bump in presentation that materializes here in the soundscapes but not quite the imagery.
Extras
A new interview with directors Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak and an archive interview with Mak, screenwriter Felix Chong Man-keung, and Hong Kong International Film Festival director Peter Tsi collectively offer a compelling primer on the Hong Kong film scene before and after the first Infernal Affairs was released. Hong Kong cinema was in a recession, which enabled Mak and Chong to assemble a murderer’s row of talent for their crisscrossing action thriller. In fact, the filmmakers’ tales of landing the various actors, and of how talk spread throughout Hong Kong over the Infernal Affairs screenplay, make for the best stories in this supplements package. Lau and Mak are also quite funny when discussing the logistics of shooting the film’s involved stakeout sequences, speaking of the drive to craft a beautiful image, when possible, out of nothing. The first film’s audio commentary with Lau, Mak, and Chong covers similar material across a more expansive running time.
Other supplements—the usual assortment of making-of featurettes, archive interviews, trailers, and bloopers—blend together into a slipstream of diverting yet forgettable “content.” Laced throughout is no small shortage of plot summaries, which only emphasizes how lifelessly plotty these films are to begin with, as well as quite a bit of talk of character motivation that borders on the obvious. More edifying are the alternate ending for the first Infernal Affairs, which illustrates the potentially fatal hand of Hong Kong censors, and film critic Justin Chang’s essay, which sharply details the trilogy’s intricate narrative patterning.
Overall
It’s good for the prosperity of Hong Kong cinema to have the Infernal Affairs films together in reasonably spiffy shape, but the definitive presentation of this trilogy has yet to be struck.
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