Fiendish Concerns
July 30th, 2004 - 11:55pm - No Comments »
This evening, Justine and I saw the sequel to one of the best films I’ve seen in the past year: Infernal Affairs. Good thing too, since I bought the DVD without ever having seen it.
We saw the film at RMIT’s Capitol Theatre, which I didn’t even know existed. The theatre has these great Escher-esque features which were lit with different coloured lights, giving off a strange, otherworldy effect. The entire time the ads were running (didn’t have previews at this film, since it’s part of the Melbourne International Film Festival and they were mostly thanking sponsors) I was looking around the theatre, gazing at the wondrous architecture.
Infernal Affairs II is actually a prequel; and it’s a good thing too, since the first film had such a rich backstory that had never been fully explained. Though probably not as good as the first, the second film (there’s actually a trilogy, we will be seeing the sequel next Friday) is still pretty good. The story twists and turns, and has an awful lot of depth — especially for a crime drama.
Basically, the plots are thus: the Triads plant a mole into the police force, and the police plant a mole into the Triads. Both know of the other’s existence but do not know who the other actually is. There are a lot more complexities to it (i.e. the mole in the Triad group is actually the half-brother of one of the leaders of the Triads, and has conflicting emotions about damaging his family) but I won’t bother going into them here.
The worst thing about the film is that Hollywood has decided to do their own remake which — as almost all recent Hollywood remakes go — will undoubtedly suck.
