Infernal Affairs

Infernal Affairs
Theatrical release poster
Traditional	無間道
Simplified	无间道
Directed by	Andrew Lau Alan Mak
Produced by	Andrew Lau
Written by	Alan Mak Felix Chong
Starring	Andy Lau Tony Leung Anthony Wong Eric Tsang
Music by	Chan Kwong-wing
Cinematography	Andrew Lau Lai Yiu-fai
Edited by	Danny Pang Curran Pang
Production company	Media Asia Films Basic Pictures
Distributed by	Media Asia Distribution
Release date	12 December 2002 (2002-12-12)
Running time	101 minutes
Country	Hong Kong
Language	Cantonese
Budget	US$6.4 million[1]
Box office	HK$55.1 million

Infernal Affairs is a 2002 Hong Kong crime thriller film directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak and written by Mak and Felix Chong. It tells the story of a police officer who infiltrates a Triad, and another officer secretly working for the same gang. It is the first in the Infernal Affairs series and is followed by Infernal Affairs II and Infernal Affairs III.

The Chinese title means "The Unceasing Path", a reference to Avici, the lowest level of Hell in Buddhism, where one endures suffering incessantly. The English title is a word play, combining the adjective 'infernal' (concerning hell) with internal affairs – the police department concerned with investigating its own officers.

The film had been selected as the Hong Kong entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 76th Academy Awards but was not nominated. Miramax Films acquired the United States distribution rights and gave it a limited US theatrical release in 2004. Martin Scorsese successfully remade the film in 2006 as The Departed, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. An Indian remake of the film is also in the works.^[2]

Plot

Chan Wing-yan, a police officer, goes undercover into a triad; only his direct superior, Superintendent Wong, is aware of his mission and true identity. Around the same time, Lau Kin-ming, a triad member, infiltrates the Hong Kong Police Force on the orders of a powerful gang boss, Hon Sam. Each mole has been planted by the rival organisation to gain an advantage in intelligence over the other side. Over the course of ten years, Chan experiences great stress from his undercover work while Lau quickly rises through the ranks in the police department.

Using Morse code the Chan is able to relay data back to the police. However, Lau alerts Hon, giving him enough time to order his minions to dispose of the evidence. After the incident, both Wong and Hon are tasked with finding the moles in their respective organization.

Wong intends to pull Chan out of undercover work for fear of his safety. However, he is caught by Hon's men and is killed when he is thrown off the building, having refused to reveal Chan despite the beating from the gangsters.

Through this incident, Lau retrieves Wong's cell phone and contacts Chan; both of them agree to foil a drug deal by Hon. The plan succeeds and many of Hon's men are arrested, while Lau betrays Hon and murders him. Everything seems to have returned to normal. However, back at the police headquarters, Chan discovers that Lau was the mole and leaves immediately.

Chan and Lau meet on the same rooftop where Wong was killed earlier. Chan disarms Lau and holds a pistol to his head as a rebuke to Lau's plea for forgiveness and request to remain as a cop. Inspector B arrives on the scene shortly and orders Chan to release Lau. Chan holds Lau as a hostage at gunpoint and backs into the lift, but upon moving his head from behind Lau he is suddenly shot in the head by B. B then reveals to Lau that he is also a mole planted by Hon. As they take the lift down to the lobby, Lau kills B out of his desire to eradicate traces of his past, become a "good guy" cop, and end the mole hunt.

Stepping out of the lift, Lau shows his identity card to the police to identify himself as one of them. Months after Chan's death, Lee discovers records revealing Chan's true identity as an undercover police officer; B becomes a scapegoat for Lau as the real mole in the police force and the case is closed. Lau salutes Chan at his funeral. A flashback reaffirms the point that Lau wished he had taken a different route in life.

Cast

Pre-release publicity focused on its star-studded cast (Andy Lau, Tony Leung, Anthony Wong, Eric Tsang, Kelly Chen and Sammi Cheng). However, entire cast exists as follows:

• Andy Lau as Senior Inspector Lau Kin-ming (劉健明), Hon's mole in the police force.
  • Edison Chen as young Lau Kin-ming
• Tony Leung as Chan Wing-yan (陳永仁), an undercover cop in Hon's triad.
  • Shawn Yue as young Chan Wing-yan
• Anthony Wong as Superintendent Wong Chi-shing (黃志誠), Chan's superior.
• Eric Tsang as Hon Sam (韓琛), the triad boss and main antagonist.
• Chapman To as "Silly" Keung (傻強), Hon's henchman.
• Gordon Lam as Inspector B (大B; Big B), Lau's subordinate who is also a mole in the police force.
• Sammi Cheng as Mary, Lau's fiancée.
• Kelly Chen as Lee Sum-yee (李心兒), Chan's psychiatrist.
• Berg Ng as Senior Inspector Cheung (張Sir), Wong's subordinate.
• Wan Chi-keung as Officer Leung (梁Sir), the police chief.
• Dion Lam as Del Piero, Hon's henchman.
• Elva Hsiao as May, Chan's ex-girlfriend.

Reception

Infernal Affairs garnered mainly positive reviews from film critics and audiences. Feedback for the film has been overwhelmingly positive, with an approval rating of 94% on review website Rotten Tomatoes. The website's critical consensus remarks the film as, "Smart and engrossing, this is one of Hong Kong's better cop thrillers"^[3] While an overwhelming majority of viewers praised the film, a few film critics complained of the generic and forgettable plot-line^[4].With regard to film's overall design, movie critics point that the moral dilemmas and emotional elements of the film were the main attributions that transformed the “somewhat unoriginal plot” into a success ^[5].

Awards and nominations

Cinematic techniques

Within Infernal Affairs, cinemagraphers Andrew Lau and Lai Yiu-fai rely heavily on cinematic techniques in order to convey flashbacks, scene changes, and dialogues respectively. Flashbacks are found throughout the film to reference the origin of relationships and the side the characters stand on^[9] Scene changes are often made through the use of jump-cuts, freeze-frame shots, and fade outs. Whereas dialogues within the film are often captured by close-ups. The importance of jump cuts provides the effect of jumping forwards in time, and manipulating the duration of a single-shot, therefore moving the audience forward into time and establishing the next scene.^[10] In addition, the use of freeze-frame shots provides the illusion that the action has ceased, establishing an important moment of the film. This provides characters the time for internal dialogue and leave an iconic lasting image.^[11] Fade outs provides the audience the understanding and indicates that a period of time has passed during the film.^[12] The use of close-ups establishes the character's face through the use of zooming in to heightens the actor's ability and empowers emotions in a film scene.^[13]

Music

The original film score for Infernal Affairs was written and performed by Chan Kwong-wing.

The theme song, Infernal Affairs (無間道), was composed by Ronald Ng, lyrics provided by Albert Leung, and performed in Cantonese and Mandarin by Andy Lau and Tony Leung.

Although not included in the soundtrack, Tsai Chin's (蔡琴) song "Forgotten Times" (《被遺忘的時光》) features prominently in this film as a recurring element of its storyline, and also in its sequels. As well as serving to elucidate the theme of the films, the song plays an important plot function in chronologically connecting various elements of the story. The (a capella) song can be first heard when Chen and Lau meet in a store, as they are analyzing hi-fi equipment.

Symbolism

Adaptations

In 2003, Brad Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment acquired the rights for a Hollywood remake, named The Departed, which was directed by Martin Scorsese, and starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, and Mark Wahlberg, set in Boston, Massachusetts, roughly based on the life of famed Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger. The Departed was released on 6 October 2006 and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Andrew Lau, the co-director of Infernal Affairs, who was interviewed by Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, said: "Of course I think the version I made is better, but the Hollywood version is pretty good too. [Scorsese] made the Hollywood version more attuned to American culture." Andy Lau,^[17] one of the main actors in Infernal Affairs, when asked how the movie compares to the original, said: "The Departed was too long and it felt as if Hollywood had combined all three Infernal Affairs movies together."^[18] Lau pointed out that the remake featured some of the "golden quotes" of the original but did have much more swearing. He ultimately rated The Departed 8/10 and said that the Hollywood remake is worth a view, though according to Lau's spokeswoman Alice Tam, he felt that the combination of the two female characters into one in The Departed was not as good as the original storyline.^[19]

Lau, Tsang, and Cheung parodied the cinema scene to promote the Hong Kong Film Awards. Lau and Tsang, in their respective characters, go through the scene where they meet to gather info on the undercover cop amongst Hon Sam's gang. Lau Kin-ming asks Hon "Why do we always meet in a cinema?", to which Hon answers "It's quiet. No one comes to movies". Cheung comes out from the shadows behind them and says "I don't know...quite a few people watch movies" and we see a slew of Hong Kong celebrities watching various clips of Hong Kong films on the screen. Originally Tony Leung was going to appear but scheduling conflicts led to the recasting.

The 2003 TVB spoof celebrating the Chinese New Year called Mo Ba To (吐氣羊眉賀新春之無霸道), the 2004 comedy film Love Is a Many Stupid Thing by Wong Jing, and the 2004 TVB television drama Shades of Truth were re-writings based on the plot of the film.

In Taiwan SHODA (劉裕銘) and a secondary school student Blanka (布蘭卡) cut and rearranged the original film and inserted new sound tracks to produce their videos Infernal Affairs CD pro2 and Infernal Affairs iPod on the web. The videos had many views and both producers removed their videos after receiving cease and desist letters from the Group Power Workshop Limited (群體工作室), the Taiwan distributor of the film.^[20]

Media Asia released a limited edition of eight-DVD set of the Infernal Affairs trilogy in an Ultimate Collectible Boxset (無間道終極珍藏DVD系列(8DVD套裝)) on 20 December 2004. Features included an online game and two Chinese fictional novels of the film series by Lee Muk-Tung (李牧童), titled 無間道I+II小說 ISBN 962-672-259-2 and 無間道III終極無間小說 ISBN 962-672-271-1.

The hi-fi shop scene was later recreated with additions of excerpts of the film to encourage businesses to join the Quality Tourism Services Scheme in Hong Kong.^[21]

In 2009, a Korean remake City of Damnation, which was directed by Kim Dong-won was released on 22 January 2009.^[22] In 2009, a Telugu remake Homam, which directed and acted by JD Chakravarthy along with Jagapathi Babu was released and became a notable movie^[23][24]. In 2012, Double Face (ダブルフェイス), a Japanese television remake starring Hidetoshi Nishijima was released by TBS and WOWOW.^[25] The production aired in two parts: "Police Impersonation" on WOWOW and "Undercover" on TBS.

A TV-Series remake has been scheduled to debut in 2018 produced by Media Asia and former TVB producer Tommy Leung. The series, which is titled "Infernal Affairs" like the film, stars Damian Lau, Paul Chun, Lo Hoi-pang, Eric Tsang, Derek Kok, Dominic Lam, and Toby Leung.^[26] The TV show uses the same concept as the film, but with an entirely new story and characters, and the setting will expand beyond Hong Kong to include Thailand and Shezhen. It will stretch through three seasons with each season consisting of 12 episodes. ^[27]

A Hindi remake is in progress and is produced by Mumbai-based production Azure Entertainment and Warner Bros India^[28]

The success of the film inspired many genres, including an open-world video game titled Sleeping Dogs (or True Crime: Hong Kong before canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011),^[29] with the protagonist of the story infiltrating the criminal underworld as an undercover police. Sleeping Dogs was developed by United Front Games and published by Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series owner Square Enix.

See also

• Cinema of Hong Kong
• List of Hong Kong films
• Andy Lau filmography
• List of films featuring surveillance
• List of films set in Hong Kong

References

External links

• Infernal Affairs on IMDb
• Infernal Affairs at Box Office Mojo
• Infernal Affairs at Rotten Tomatoes
• Infernal Affairs at Metacritic