Just prior to the 1997 handover, Hong Kong cinema began to produce increasingly anxious, frequently apocalyptic and morally ambiguous undercover cop dramas, wherein the police were often corrupt and brutal thugs while honour and much male bonding could be found among thieves. After all, if you can’t trust Mrs. Thatcher to keep you safe from the Chinese, then who can you trust? The best practitioners within this genre – John Woo and Ringo Lam among them – have long since headed for the Hollywood hills, and the Hong Kong film industry is greatly diminished by their absence. Happy to report then, that Infernal Affairs confirms that there’s life in Sir Run Run’s film empire yet.
As with The Killer, Hard Boiled, Bullet In The Head, Full Contact et al., this glossy thriller features a hero and villain nominally on opposite sides of the law. Yan (Leung) is an undercover cop who has infiltrated the Triads, while across town Ming (Lau) is a Triad mole in the police department. The imperative is on each to discover their opposite number before they get caught themselves, and naturally the bodies start to mount in the process.
As with most films from the region, there’s a downright Sirkian melodramatic undercurrent beneath all the hyper-kinetic, ass-kicking action, though it’s not quite up there with the divas-in-love denoument of The Killer. The camerawork, overseen by the wonderful Chris Doyle (Wong Kar-Wai’s cinematographer) is inventive and dazzling, and the pace varies between blistering and chaotic.
Essentially, it’s one for all the cool kids out there, but those desperately pining for John Woo’s return to form will also be suitably impressed.