The movie begins with a famous Buddhist saying: "The road to the infernal hell - the infernal way". Buddhists who kill their parents and above the level of Arhat are all killed and will go to hell. But this hell is no ordinary hell, but Avici hell. "Abi" is a transliteration, and the free translation is "incessant hell", all kinds of torture will never stop. It is the bottom of the eight hells of Buddhism, and it is full of felons.
In modern, English-speaking Hong Kong, where tradition meets modernity at the intersection of Asia , police officers intersperse Cantonese with phrases like "yes sir and "sorry", while police funerals follow in the footsteps of pipers The sound comes. It combines exhilarating "hot" action with the coolness of "character emotion", the glass and steel of the city gleaming.
"Infernal Affairs" relies on a dramatic confrontation between the police and the underworld, and it feels a bit like the classic Robert De Niro-Al Pacino standoff in Michael Mann's "The Wire." But in my opinion, the film is more complex and elusive than Michael Mann's achievement.
Tony Leung is one of the most infectious and charismatic actors in the Asian film industry . He played Chen Yongren, who has been an undercover triad for 10 years. He has been immersed in triad culture as an adult, and he must always be Beware of life-threatening exposure to identity.
Chen Yongren has become one of the most trusted lieutenants of the triad boss Han Chen (Zeng Zhiwei) . Smart, he started this extremely dangerous and thankless task by being publicly humiliated and expelled from the police academy as early as the age of 18. This is a major secret of the police academy, and since then he has only contacted Officer Huang (played by Huang Qiusheng) - the only person who knows his true identity. But Chen Yongren has become more and more desperate, so that he is "psychopathic" and asked to see a psychiatrist. Officer Huang assured Chen Yongren that he could be a normal person after completing the last task.
At the same time, there is a triad traitor in the police force. Liu Jianming, played by Andy Lau, attended the same police academy as Chen Yongren , and he has become a police officer with a perfect resume. He secretly reported to Han Chen, sabotaging all police raids on Han Chen's drug trade. When the police suspected that there was a traitor in the team, it was Liu Jianming's Ministry of Internal Affairs who found the suspect. The natural killer started some hints: this "traitor" is Officer Huang.
Beyond these elusive ironies, both have unusual circumstances . Lonely Chen Yongren suffers from insomnia and finds himself sleeping on the therapist's sofa: this special arrangement has been approved by the beautiful female psychiatrist (Hui Lin Chen).
Liu Jianming has moved into a beautiful house with his fiancee Mary (played by Zheng Xiuwen). His fiancée is a writer and is writing a novel whose protagonist suffers from multiple personality disorder. She is secretly relying on Liu Jianming, and we don't have to guess how much truth she intuitively knows. But it's a pretty neat storyline.
Because they didn't know each other, Liu Jianming and Chen Yongren also met by chance in a hi-fi shop. At that time, Chen Yongren also helped Liu Jianming choose the right speakers and listen to the song together: "Who is knocking on my window".
The film carries some of the DNA of the classic undercover gangster film, as well as the dual influence of Lin Lingdong's "Dragon Tiger" and Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs . " But the focus of director Lau Wai Keung and screenwriter and director Mak Siu Fai is not violence, but the chasing of old enemies between "cat and mouse games", and the paranoia of not knowing who the enemy is - whether it is internal or external, let alone knowing How to get rid of the opponent without exposing yourself to win.
Liang Chaowei once revealed in an interview that Alain Delon had an influence on his performance style-his face did have a sensitive, dreamy and longing temperament, and there was a hint of melancholy in his eyes, and his sparse beard But can't hide this. Of the two, he looked younger, even a little boyish. Perhaps it is this temperament that earned him the Best Actor Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards.
Andy Lau is completely different . The big Hong Kong action star's face is remarkably sharp, ferocious, and almost wild in the film, with eyes, nose and jaws that look like some kind of weapon. When he smiles, he looks like a character from a comic or a computer game, smiling with an incomprehensible malice. What is so strange is that his character has developed more difficult to read than Chen Yongren, and Liu Jianming's ambition has achieved a qualitative leap under Andy Lau's perfect performance, and therefore the Taiwan Golden Horse Award awarded him the Best Actor Award.
Of course, Chen Yongren and Liu Jianming have similar backgrounds : serious self-reflection and self-awareness are like it is impossible for humans to fly without help - Chen Yongren can doze off on the psychiatrist's sofa and get out of there But suffer from insomnia. But they suddenly realize that they are secretly engaged in a profession that betrays the people closest to them. More importantly, they realize each other: each person's existence is a mirror through which they can glimpse a lifetime of anxiety and deceit.
In the end, all these inner unease and dissatisfaction were suppressed and turned into action . Just like Han Chen, who always seemed to have a hint of cunning in his smile, at first "confidently" said this to his subordinates: " A general will succeed !" But there are no generals, let alone kings, only some Small rulers rule an unstable bipolar turf with undercover cops and police moles in its black economy.
The most classic scene in the movie appeared on a bleached roof under the sunlight in the center of Hong Kong. The meeting of the two also decided the fate of the two. "I didn't have a choice before, I want to be a good person now", "See if the judge will let you be a good person!". This also leads to the Buddhist proverb: "When people, even without knowing it, meet one day, no matter what happens, no matter what path they deviate, they inevitably come together. ." In the end, the undercover policeman was shot and killed by another police molester, and Han Chen also died of the "police molester" that he carefully arranged.
"Infernal Affairs" is a gripping thriller, engaging plot, gripping suspense , it's fast paced, and there's always the danger that one or the other protagonist will be discovered, so it feels like an action movie , without the annoying obligations of car chases and explosions.
In stark contrast to the Woo-Sen-style violence that is prevalent in many Hong Kong films, there is no violence at all until an hour before the film is released. On a few occasions, the film falls into a kind of old-fashioned sentimentalism, but luckily these digressions (mainly subplots involving Chen Yongren and his beautiful psychiatrist) are brief.
For the most part, Infernal Affairs is a physical lesson in narrative economics. While Mak and Lau were meticulous in setting up the film's numerous twists and turns and developments, they didn't waste a lot of time taking the audience to understand them. (For example, when Chen Yongren ran into his ex-girlfriend, the movie only implied that she left Chen Yongren because she thought he was indeed a gangster and that Chen Yongren was the father of her young child, but they also never made it clear that these two point.)
Infernal Affairs has an increasingly rare form of entertainment that asks viewers to do something on their own and is therefore more engaging.
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