Review of Infernal Affairs (2002) by Edith N — 14 Sep 2009

Compare and Contrast.

Any film that is remade will be compared to its remake; such is the way of using someone else's material. Given that the remake is Martin Scorsese, there is going to be great and heated debate as to which is better, with everyone's prejudices and interests and preferences swinging their stances. I admit it's been a while since I saw the remake--that would have been Oscarpalooza the year it was nominated, I believe, so '07--and I've watched an awful lot of movies since then, so my memory's not the clearest. I know I was in favour of Scorsese's winning the Oscar, but that was partly my belief that he deserved it as kind of a career thing. Looking back on my review, I see the problems I had with it, and I find several of them resolved in this version. For one thing, there's a female cop in this who's just sort of part of how things are in the department. Okay, I don't know which character she was, but since I didn't know who most of the cops were, did it matter?

In the beginning, there were two men on different paths. Chen Wing Yan (the incomparable Tony Leung) is in the academy, working toward becoming a cop. On the other hand, there is Lau Kin Ming (Andy Lau), who is part of the Triad. Each one then essentially takes the other's place, with Yan being "kicked out" of police academy so that he can go under deep cover as a petty thug for the Triad and Lau going to the academy to become a mole in the police department. Yan works for drug dealer Hon Sam (Eric Tsang), but he works with SP Wong Chi Shing (Anthony Wong Chau-Shang). Lau is the other way 'round. And in time, as the heart of the movie is taking place, each side works out that the pattern of events means there must be a mole in their ranks. And, of course, each side seems to set the one mole to find himself. Each must also hide himself from the woman in whom he is interested--Lau is planning to marry Mary (Sammi Cheng), and Yan falls for Dr. Lee Sum Yee (Kelly Chen), the psychiatrist Wong sends him to. On the other hand, Lee is a psychiatrist, and so Yan does end up with someone he can come clean to.

Yeah, okay. The women aren't exactly exquisitely detailed here, either, because this is still a movie about men shooting guns. Women are still on the borders of importance, just one more pressure on the moles. There is also the curious and out-of-nowhere appearance of May (Elva Hsiao) and the implication that her daughter (Leung Chiu Li) is perhaps not the child of her husband, that she doesn't want Yan to know that he has a daughter, probably because she doesn't want to be connected to the Triad and Yan's sordid deeds. There's that one woman among the police officers--and if I knew Chinese names better, I could tell you who she is. I'm sorry I don't; it makes me feel dreadfully insular and American. (The character may or may not have a name, but I can't even tell you who the actress is.) Still, I think three of the four women are actually shown to have motivations beyond "propping up the menfolk." Two of the women are shown to have motivations and interests beyond the storyline, even--it's not as though Yan is Lee's only patient.

It is not technically correct to say that the number of characters has been pruned down from the Scorsese version, given that this is the original, after all. And there still are a fair number of characters, but most of them form a background--there are more named characters in the Scorsese, and I even think the unnamed character list is substantially longer. I think it really boils down to a half-dozen characters you're really intended to think about for the most part. There are the two moles, there are the two controllers, there are the two women. There are lesser characters, too, like May, and Sam's underling Tsui Wai-keung (Chapman To), but they only matter briefly and inasmuch as they influence the actions of the moles. Everything else in the movie is trimmed away. We see a couple of capers, and we see how each man's actions influence what gang and police do, but only just enough to paint a picture of what we need to know to give the story its framework.

No, once again, I think we have an original that surpasses the remake, for all the remake has the inimitable Scorsese touch and a cast, um, that I've heard of. (I don't watch a lot of Hong Kong films.) For one thing, honestly, the swearing gets kind of tedious. Or a lot tedious. I'm sure a lot of people in the depressing venues Scorsese movies show us really do talk like that, but ye Gods. If it's supposed to have impact, it loses it awful damn fast. Stephen King tells us in [i]On Writing[/i] that your characters should swear if they're in a place where they'd swear, but I think the fact that these men speak a little more cleanly--on several levels--makes them more interesting and more believable. Because there are fewer deaths, the deaths there are have more impact. I think more attention is put into character building here, and I've always preferred that to just people running around shooting each other. Which sometimes makes me wonder why I watch some of these movies in the first place.