The final installment in the Infernal Affairs trilogy. I’d say Infernal Affairs II is probably better made than this one, although I personally enjoyed watching this one more (largely because of the acting, natch.) Neither follow-up matches the original for the tightness of the plot, the tension, or the sheer cool factor, but while there are definite diminishing returns, the good-to-pretty-good sequels don’t take away from the awesomeness of the first movie (spoilers for the end of Infernal Affairs.)
Ten months after the events of the first movie, Ming is living the epitome of “it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.” It turns out that deciding you’re going to shift from being an undercover triad in the police force to being a legit cop isn’t a one-and-done act. There are other triad moles imbedded in the department, and Ming’s efforts to cover all his bases without being discovered leads him to Yeung, a superintendent in the Security division who may be a mole himself. Meanwhile, five months before the events of the first movie, Yan has his own encounters with Yeung while navigating a fraught mission undercover in Sam’s gang.
There are two main knocks against this film. One, some of the twists get kind of absurd, and not in a fun way – it gets very “wait, what?!” in places. And two, none of it strictly needs to exist. The whole thing is pretty extraneous, hinging a lot of the story in both the present and the past on a major player who was never mentioned in either of the first two movies. There are certain “and that’s the origin of that” scenes that aren’t really needed either. Like, were there people clamoring to know how Yan’s arm ended up in a cast at the start of the first movie? The film exists because people wanted more, not because it’s a story that needed telling.
And yet, for all of that, I must be one of the people who wanted more, because I still enjoyed myself for the most part. It’s nice to return to more of the actors from the first movie, and it’s interesting to see how Ming deals with his secrets and guilt pushing him to the limit. It gets all the way into Macbeth territory, and Andy Lau plays that nicely – there’s the way that his one big move to change his station at the end of Infernal Affairs now needs to be maintained with increasingly dark/risky actions, as well as the effect that all this has on his psyche. Yeung is a fine character to add to the proceedings, a smooth criminal (or not-criminal? While the first film lays out Yan and Ming’s true allegiances in the opening sequence, it makes us guess about Yeung’s loyalties) who remains calm in the face of violence. He’s played by Leon Lai, who played the Killer in Fallen Angels, one of the only Wong Kar-wai movies that Tony Leung Chiu-wai isn’t in. Another new character here is Shen, a Mainlander doing business with Sam in the flashback sequences. Throughout the film, I was trying to place the actor, and I finally realized it was Chen Dao Ming, who played the Emperor in the spectacular Hero.
Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s Yan is in the movie way more than I was expecting, and he for sure contributes to how much I enjoy it despite its extraneous feel. Given that Yan is killed at the end of the first film, I was expecting a few brief flashbacks or maybe some guilt-induced dream sequences woven into a main plot about Ming, basically just enough to say, “Leung’s technically in it, so we can put his name and face on the poster as big as we want!” But the flashbacks are extensive, and Leung’s screentime is probably on par with Lau’s. And, needed or not, it does make me happy to get so much more of Yan.
Because Leung remains so good in this role. It’s neat to see more of Yan within the triads outside of the immediate pressure cooker of Sam knowing there’s a mole in his ranks. There’s less of an overt threat for him, but it’s still an incredibly-delicate situation, as he’s forever threading the needle of doing enough crime to maintain the access he needs to get intel while not getting in so deep that he might as well not call himself a cop anymore. I love seeing how quick on his feet he is, the wheels constantly turning back his eyes. You see how he weighs his decisions with Sam, how he brushes off Superintendent Wong’s concern for him even as he knows he’s not in a great place. And in amongst the tension and the shrewdness, he still exudes this quiet dignity – I can’t fully articulate what it is or why it’s there, but you know it when you see it.
We also get a lot more of Yan’s relationship with his therapist, Dr. Lee, which honest-to-God veers almost into rom-com territory at times. Again, none of it is strictly needed, but Leung is so ridiculously charming in these scenes that I don’t care. I enjoy his resentment at Wong forcing him into counseling, knowing that he can’t say anything that would blow his cover, mixed with his instant attraction toward Dr. Lee. There’s a great montage of him blatantly avoiding engaging in the therapeutic process, going so far as to conduct triad business on his phone during his sessions, and his flirting is so casual but at the same time so obvious. I also love a quieter scene in which Dr. Lee simply tells him that she can only help him if he tells her the truth. Yan spends the majority of the film hiding who he is, and he builds his façade back up within seconds of this statement, but for just a moment, his face is an open book. You can see how much he hates to disappoint her, as well as glimpse the small part of him that wishes for his own sake that he could unburden himself. Simply wonderful.
Recommend?
In General – I think so. It’s obviously not as good as Infernal Affairs, but if you go into it knowing that and just enjoy getting more of the characters, I think you’ll have a good time.
Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Yes. Even though Yan didn’t have much story left that really needed telling, Leung plays every scene for all he’s worth. It’s a genuine pleasure to get more of his interpretation of this character.
Warnings
Strong violence, drinking/smoking/drug references, language, and thematic elements.
* * *
Love
this IMAX poster. Not much news today. Just the continued flailing at how much
early reactions to Shang-Chi are
loving Wenwu and the delicious notion that, the next time I do a Little TLC(w)
write-up, it’ll be for Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s MFing Hollywood debut! I’m still
trying to decide whether I’ll give the movie review itself the A Little TLC(w)
treatment or if I’ll try to contain myself and save it for a Favorite
Characters post (from the sounds of the reactions, I’ll be needing one.) Or
hey, maybe both! This moment has been a long time coming, and I’m going to need
to bask in it.
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