Infernal Affairs

Saw Infernal Affairs, the movie 'pon which was based The Departed. It's the story of dueling moles: one in the police force working for a triad and the other in that very triad, working for the cops. If you've seen The Departed, it has a virtually identical plot. The plot twists and turns and is full of surprises, so much kudos goes to the original screenwriter. This may be the first crime film that incorporated cellphones and computers without them being ridiculous or superfluous. However, this film has the common Asian cinema weakness of extreme melodrama. When one major character dies, we get a full blown black-and-white-toned montage of moments from earlier in the movie where the character is smiling, or giving advice, or just walking. All of this set to weepy violins. This kind of nonsense does not occur in The Departed. The evil mobster is not as crazy as Jack Nicholson's take on him. This is necessary for thematic reasons. This film is more interested in betrayal than Scorsese's film. This interest in betrayal is clever and rich: the two cops have each betrayed their supposed superiors, their comrades, even each other at one point. It is a rich vein to mine.

The ending of this film is more annoying than in The Departed (so, highlight for spoilers:) In The Departed, Matt Damon's evil police-mole is shot. He's not taken to jail and publicly humiliated, which is what I wanted to see, but there is a sort of justice here. In this film, the only justice that that character meets is in the form of his conscience which is not at all satisfying. Title-cards with quotes from the Buddha about the 'eternal hell' which is the hell that must be lived with set up this ending and I like the troubling ambiguity of it a lot more than an easy bullet to the head. Still, the animal in me wants vengeance if not justice and though I am intellectually satisfied, I am emotionally robbed. Apparently this ending was sufficiently annoying even to the Chinese film-board to demand an alternate ending, where arrests are made. This was for political reasons (the original ending would seem to imply a less-than-perfect police force and that wouldn't do.) but I imagine audiences were grateful for the change.

Spoilers over, but nothing more to say. Scorsese's version is a touch better due to a bit more restraint, but this film got here first so it deserves as much praise for an ingenious plot and concept.