Infernal Affairs II (2003)

When I first watched Infernal Affairs all those years ago, I didn’t realize it was actually a trilogy. I didn’t learn that until later, and I’m now watching the latter two films for the first time. The second installment in the series is a prequel, and my review of it won’t be a Little TLC(w) post, since Tony Leung Chiu-wai isn’t actually in it. Instead, Yan and Ming are played by their flashback actors from the beginning of the first movie: Shawn Yue as Yan and Edison Chen as Ming. However, I know that Leung is back in the third movie, and I wanted to watch this one beforehand to get the whole picture.

Ten years before the events of Infernal Affairs, a young triad recruit named Ming is tapped to join the police academy, serving as the gang’s mole in the force. At the same time, a young police cadet named Yan is given the opportunity to go deep undercover among the triads. As the two moles establish themselves, Superintendent Wong works to keep the city safe amid a changeover in gang leadership.

We’ll start with the obvious. Without Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau, Yan and Ming aren’t nearly as electric to watch. Yue and Chen are both fine in their roles, but they have massive shoes to fill and can’t match the intensity of the performances in the original (shades of Alden Ehrenreich being tasked with living up to the charisma of young Harrison Ford for Solo.) As such, maybe it’s smart that Infernal Affairs II is more of an ensemble piece than the original, less focused on the suspenseful, danger-filled lives of the two moles and more about the entire landscape. We see upper-level triad bosses jockey for position after a hit on their leader, blowing up rivalries between each other. We see members of the police force clashing over how best to combat gang activity, and of course, we see the interplay between the two camps. Yan and Ming are just two parts of that larger puzzle.

For me, all this makes it less gripping than Infernal Affairs, and the prequel comes away feeling a little more generic. However, it’s probably better off casting a wider net instead of just trying to replicate the feel and format of the original, since I don’t think it would’ve been able to get there. This allows different aspects of the film to rise to the surface. I’m really interested in the portrayals of Wong and Sam earlier in their careers, as well as in their relationship with each other. The first film lets you feel the weight of the many years they’ve been on opposite sides of the game, and this movie reveals some interesting stuff about their past. Anthony Wong and Eric Tsang both do a nice job of showing us who these characters were back then while offering a throughline to who they are in the first movie. There are also some strong new characters/performances, including Carina Lau (Mimi from Days of Being Wild) as Sam’s wife Mary and Francis Ng as Hau, an emerging triad boss. On the other hand, certain twists/reveals, in my opinion, do little to enhance what we know from Infernal Affairs, and I could’ve done without them.

Warnings

Violence, drinking/smoking/drug use, sexual references, language, and thematic elements.

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Even though we’re not doing A Little TLC(w) today, we’ve still got some Tony Leung Chiu-wai content to enjoy in the form of new Shang-Chi stuff! In the last couple of days, Marvel has released a new promo and a short featurette for the film. The promo contains a handful of new snippets among footage we’ve already seen, and the Ten Rings continue to look so damn cool in action. Every single shot of Leung as Wenwu fighting gets me so hyped – pushing 60 and he’s still such a badass! Another thing I appreciate about the promo is that it actually gives us a little more of Shang-Chi himself. I’ve felt kind of bad about being so excited about Leung to the exclusion of nearly everything else about the movie, but it looks like it’ll be a really solid film all around. Meanwhile, the featurette, which includes brief talking heads from Kevin Feige, Simu Liu, Awkwafina, and Destin Daniel Cretton in between footage, includes more new shots. The biggest takeaway? The fight scenes in this movie are gonna be incredible. There are also some new shots of Wenwu and what sounds like a different reading of a line heard in one of the earlier trailers, which I like. As much as I enjoy the trailers giving me so much Tony Leung Chiu-wai voiceover, there are definitely lines that feel like they’re delivered in “voiceover mode”: slow, deliberate, and serious in a way that wouldn’t necessarily flow within an actual scene. Getting a little taste of Leung’s dialogue in the context of a scene further cements my feeling that we have nothing to worry about with his English-language debut. He’s gonna kill it!