Movie Review: Infernal Affairs/無間道

In 2002 Andrew Lau Wai Keung brought us Infernal Affairs/無間道, the story of a cop undercover in a gang and a gangster undercover in the police department.

Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Andy Lau play the respective cop and gangster.

Anthony Wong play’s Tony’s handler, the only man who knows who Tony really is. 

The undercover-cop-about-to-crack has been a pretty common plot line in Hong Kong and elsewhere. The bestexample I know of is out of print, so I can’t tell you about it.

But Infernal Affairs/無間道 has, quite deservedly, become somewhat of a touchstone of the genre.

Featuring strong performances from the leading and support actors, an interesting and intricate plot, and enough twists to keep you guessing,  Infernal Affairs/無間道 deserves its place in Hong Kong cinema history.

It’s not a perfect film; you can certainly find the holes in the plot if you look, and the female characters are little more than window dressing, but overall the film is still, more than a decade later, an impressive achievement.

It’s funny, or not, that back in 2003 when this movie first went to DVD, the mainland ending was an optional extra.

Nowadays, we just get the mainland ending to movies, and it’s rare that we get the chance to see what the Hong Kong ending might have been. 

The only one I can think of is LADY COP & PAPA CROOK.

Times change, and so do movies.

The movie was successful enough that they made 2 sequels in rapid succession.

Infernal Affairs/無間道 2 is a prequel starring Edison ‘laptop’ Chen and Shawn Yue.

I actually enjoyed Infernal Affairs/無間道 3 as a character study.

I can easily recommend Infernal Affairs/無間道 (and the sequels), and if you’ve never seen it (them), I strongly encourage you to do so.