Hey folks, Harry here... this sucks... I just got finished watching INFERNAL AFFAIRS 2 tonight, and while... not nearly as wonderful or fresh as the original INFERNAL AFFAIRS which is just out and out brilliant... hearing that 3 just blows is incredibly disheartening. The problem with INFERNAL AFFAIRS 2 for me was that I could actually feel the film ape-ing THE GODFATHER Part 2, and that pissed me off, because the original INFERNAL AFFAIRS was innovating the crime film, not regurgitating it. BEWARE OF SPOILERS and DISAPPOINTMENT by reading below...
Hey Harry,
It is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that Infernal Affairs III ruins everything that has gone before it. This was fast becoming one of the great film series of Hong Kong cinema and doing wonders to reinvigorate an almost completely awful period of filmmaking for the region.
There are so many things wrong with this film that is difficult to know where to start. I shall tackle as many of them as I can, but be warned, to do so, I have to include huge spoilers from all three films.
IA3 follows two different timelines: the six months leading up to Yan's (Tony Leung) death and then picks up the action again 10 months later, as Ming (Andy Lau) tries, from within the Internal Affairs bureau, to cover up his past for good. This means that the chronology of the series runs as follows:
IA2: 1991-97
IA3 (part of): 2002
IA1: 2002
IA3 (part of): 2003
In the six months leading up to Yan's death, Sam (Eric Tsang) enters into a big deal with a gangster, Shen (Chen Dao Ming), from Mainland China to smuggle both guns and drugs over the border. Yan is positioning himself well within the gang, thanks to Keung (Chapman To), who sees himself as Yan's mentor. However, after being arrested for severely beating one of Shen's henchmen on Sam's orders, Yan is ordered by the courts to undergo six months psychiatric treatment. (This is SP Wong's (Anthony Wong) way of keeping him out of jail). This is where he meets Dr. Lee (Kelly Chen) and we follow the development of their relationship.
Meanwhile, Sam's new dealings are making him paranoid and he sets Yan up to take a fall at the hands of Shen and his men. Fortunately, it transpires that Shen is actually an undercover cop, working with Leung (Leon Lai), a high-ranking officer from the Security Bureau. Leung recognizes Yan from their days together at the cadet school and lets him go.
10 months after Yan is killed, Ming, now with Internal Affairs, is given the job of investigating Leung, who is suspected of being a triad mole. There are apparently five moles within the force and they are mysteriously dying one by one. IA suspects that Leung is trying to cover up his real identity by murdering the other undercover triads.
Ming is suffering from severe identity crisis and guilt. He longs to be a good and honest cop and becomes increasingly jealous of the dead Yan and his honorable fate. Ming's wife Mary (Sammi Cheng) is in the process of divorcing him and refuses to let him come anywhere near her or their newborn baby.
Ming crosses paths with Dr. Lee, who is grief stricken by Yan's death, and Ming longs to confess to her who he really is. Ming breaks into Leung's office and steals tape recordings that he hopes will expose Leung and confronts him in front of an office-full of armed police. The tapes, however, turn out to be the proof that Ming is the mole killing other officers. Ming goes nuts and shoots Leung but is himself wounded in the shootout. He tries to kill himself but fails, and is left paralyzed and alone at the end of the film.
In trying to be as complex as its predecessors IA3 runs into serious problems. As much of its subject matter has already been covered in part one, and all the main characters from 1 and 2 except Ming are already dead the plot is forced to explore irrelevant avenues and, on more than one occasion, present contradictory new evidence.
Where Yan's story should be overshadowed by his impending death, the filmmakers instead decide to show us that he was in fact a pretty decent and often humorous guy. His scenes with Dr. Lee often veer into sight gags and slapstick, which although occasionally quite funny in their own right, jar horribly with the image of Yan that we have brought to this film. Tony Leung seems to be willingly and willfully destroying his award winning creation of last year.
The other great travesty is that the gorgeous cinematography and editing are gone. The first two films had a kinetic, grungy feel to them, a voyeuristic quality that made the viewer feel like they too were undercover. This has been replaced by the most pedestrian of point-and-shoot techniques, amateurish and wholly uninspiring, that serves only to show up the film for being the last minute rush job that it so obviously was.
There are numerous, inexplicable contradictions in the story now, as a whole, that just reek of clumsiness:
1. Sam's betrayal of Yan is almost completely inexplicable and there is no reason why they should then be so close in IA1.
2. Ming's fiancÈe Mary discovers that he is a triad informer at the end of IA1 - so why does she still marry him only to divorce him less than a year later for that very same reason?
3. IA3 now renders the entire existence of IA2 utterly redundant. It neither acknowledges nor expands on anything in that film at all.
But most importantly of all:
If Leung knows that Yan is really a cop, and Yan knows this too, why does Yan get so upset when Wong dies in part one? Why doesn't he simply go to Leung for help?
IA3 is filled to the brim with stars, cramming all of the original characters in wherever they can, and giving the audience potentially exciting new ones like Leon Lai's Inspector Leung and Chen Dao Ming's mysterious black-cloaked Shen. The actors do their jobs admirably, particularly in Andy Lau's case, but to no avail. Try as they might, the humpty dumpty that is Infernal Affairs 3 is left in pieces up there on the screen, with the audience left only to dream about what might have been.
Until next time,
Marshy
