Not So Extravagant, Not So Gratuitously Wild: Infernal Affairs BY 2002, HONG KONG cinema was apparently fin- Jackie Chan, Jet Li, or Stephen Chow. Instead it The first installment was screened for Holly- ished as a viable business. Despite a substantial was an ambitious ensemble drama that played as wood companies in early 2003, and several stu- output (about ninety releases), box office receipts a trimly appointed genre picture. Endowed with a dios bid for the remake rights.5 Warner Bros. won, were slim, and imported films claimed about 60% Buddhist subtext (the original title refers to a and eventually Martin Scorsese signed on to of them. Attendance hovered at around twenty journey to Hell), it suggested that all of the char- direct. The first acknowledged US remake of a million per year, as it had since 1997—a far cry acters were plunging toward eternal torment.2 Hong Kong film, The Departed became a world- from the sixty million or so of the booming 1980s. A cop drama that took itself very seriously, it was wide success and won Scorsese his first Best Exhibitors cut ticket prices on Tuesdays and booked in foreign festivals and received a batch of Director Academy Award. After all the years of Wednesdays, but this did nothing to compensate festival awards. Surely, it seemed, Hong Kong cin- Hong Kong cloning American hits, Hollywood for the vast losses due to video piracy. ema had not lost its touch; it might even be on the finally repaid the compliment. In December there appeared a film that raised route to recovery. hopes for a new era. Infernal Affairs opened on The two followups, in October and December THIS SERIES OF TRIUMPHS came from some unlikely eighty screens, an exceptionally wide release. 2003, together attracted as much local business as sources. The creators of Infernal Affairs weren’t Featuring an all-star cast headed by two matinee the original had, ranking fifth and first respective- leaders from earlier decades like Tsui Hark or idols, it became a must-see movie. In the final two ly among Hong Kong productions. Part III also John Woo or Wong Jing. Nor were they a more weeks of the year, it scooped up US$5.6 million showed the virtues of product placement, with recent headliner like Johnnie To. Director Andrew dollars, twice that of any other local film released local fashionista Joyce dressing the stars in Lau had started in his early twenties as a cine- in 2002. It even beat the top import, Harry Potter Armani, Hugo Boss, and other brands. Through matographer at Shaws. He went on to direct many and the Chamber of Secrets. By the end of its run, tie-in adver tisements, the project garnered US$2 low-budget crime films, most famously the Young Infernal Affairs had earned US$7 million. It con- million worth of commercial sponsorship.3 Better and Dangerous series. Like Wong Jing, his pro- firmed Media Asia’s position as a major producer- still, after the first part sold two million legitimate ducing partner for some years, Lau proved him- distributor and became a touchstone in Hong video units on the Mainland, a version with a self a fast, efficient worker committed to pleasing Kong popular culture. A Japanese fusion restau- more moralistic ending was released theatrically audiences. Soon he moved up to bigger projects rant named itself after the movie, and Wong Jing there. Part III was set up as a revenue-sharing like The Storm Riders (1998), a CGI-heavy comic- mounted a parody.1 coproduction, and a sympathetic Mainland char- book adaptation. Codirector and coscreenwriter The film community wondered whether the acter was obligingly written into the plot. The Alan Mak Siu-fai had assisted on projects in sev- famine might be ending. Here was a hit that did strategy paid off: Part III did strong business in eral genres before moving to directing mid-range not depend on the audience’s enduring loyalty to the PRC.4 pictures like A War Named Desire (2000) and Planet Hong Kong Not So Extravagant, Not So Gratuitously Wild: Infernal Affairs | 203 Rave Fever (1999), an experiment in Gen-X net- early years, now had to carry more dramatic romances and comedies, are appropriately quiet work narrative. Felix Chong Man-keung had done weight. To obtain coproduction funding from as well. Leon Lai Ming, virtually a blank in any some acting before working on the script for hits China for the third entry, it was necessary to add a film he adorns, becomes the iciest figure of all and like Gen-Y Cops (2000) and Tokyo Raiders (2000). Mainland actor to the cast. The temptation to makes his Superintendant Yeung impossible to The men had worked together in pairs on some succumb to hasty, strained sequels is often seen in read. projects, but all three teamed up when Lau formed Hong Kong, as when A Better Tomorrow II gave The down-gearing of performance is most evi- his Basic Pictures company in 2002. Infernal Chow Yun-fat a twin brother in order to bring the dent in the restrained range available to Tony Affairs was the company’s first effort. beloved actor back. For the Infernal Affairs Leung Chiu-wai as the tormented undercover cop Not much in the trio’s prior work prepares one sequels, the three creators find fresh and coher- Chan Wing-yan. In the moment when he realizes for the formal intricacy and somber tones of the ent ways to expand the first film’s core situations. that his mentor and protector Wong has been trilogy. Crime films have long featured undercover Just as remarkable is the solemnity with which killed, we get subtle modulations of expression. cops who join a gang, or gangsters who infiltrate the tangled threads of action are presented. The He shifts from his customary grim demeanor, his the police. In their script for Infernal Affairs, Mak Infernal Affairs films are in a sense anti-Woo action armor in the world he has infiltrated, to shock at and Chong combine these two sorts of plots. The pictures—no extended firefights, no balletic vio- seeing Wong’s body, to a mix of sorrow and des- result is a chessgame, far more cerebral than the lence. A more minimalist approach to under world peration (Figs. IA.1–IA.3). He has lost his only standard cop film. The double plot creates sym- action had already emerged in the late 1990s, with friend, and he’s now in even greater danger. metrical lines of action, tense efforts to send or Johnnie To’s The Mission (1999) being the most Another mark of restraint is the trilogy’s refusal block information, and the pressures put upon famous example. But that film also includes gor- to rely on explicit violence. “There’s only maybe each man to track down his counterpart. Across geous bullet-riddled set-pieces. In the IA films thirty seconds of gun scenes,” remarked screen- the second and third installments, this dynamic of nearly everything is calm, understated, almost flat. writer Chong of the first film, “and everything else competition, role-playing, and covert investiga- The subdued color scheme, with cool silvers, is concentrated on the dramatic elements.”6 Chong tion becomes elaborated—not only through the greens, and blacks, is echoed in the rather neutral is exaggerating only a little. The first pistol shot in efforts of each man to hide his identity, but also performances of the major stars. Andy Lau as the IA is heard thirty minutes into the film; the first through the proliferation of other people working gang’s mole Lau Kin-ming strides virtually expres - major act of violence comes an hour in. The gun undercover for the cops or the gang. Add to this a sionless through the saga. He is characterized battles are remarkably brief, adding up to no more play with time: The second part fills in much of more by his tight, severe gait than by his masklike than four minutes of the film’s running time. the distant backstory for the first part, while face. The older actors, Anthony Wong (Superin- The body count is slightly higher in the sequels, Infernal Affairs III splits its story duration into tendant Wong) and Eric Tsang (Hon Sam), hade but all three parts rely remarkably little on the the period just before the first part and the period been facile muggers through the decades, but shattering glass, hurtling vehicles, and bullet bal- immediately after it. The scale and coherence of here they are studies in edginess masked by lets that rule local cinema. In IA III, after a burst this plotting are very rare in Hong Kong film. blandness. Likewise Francis Ng had chewed of violence in a restaurant, fully an hour passes The trilogy’s consistency is even more striking many yards of Hong Kong scenery in the past, but before any gunplay ensues, and that consumes in the light of all the constraints placed on the he plays Ngai Wing-hau as a soft-spoken gang less than a minute. Lau, Mak, and Chong keep a later entries. The enormous success of the first boss in glasses and a cardigan. The understated great deal of death offscreen, from the rooftop film virtually demanded a sequel. But the more performance style of the trilogy suits the younger fight leading to Wong’s fatal fall in IA, to Yeung’s sympathetic of the two protagonists was killed, so actors, like Edison Chen (the teenage Lau) and subduing of a demented officer in IA III.