Spoilers Warning !!!
Infernal Affair created a box office miracle in Hong Kong last year not because it is a particularly brilliant film, but because of the lame comparisons that went on before. Still, I.A. is a solid piece of work which, coupled with the hype that has been building up, becomes quite an act to follow. For I.A. 2 the scriptwriters' task is to strike a good balance of giving a life of its own and yet preserving an adequate link with the first one. The challenge is compounded by the fact that this is a prequel, dictating that the audience would know that the people they've seen before are not going to die here, a rather irritating handicap for a crime story.
The scriptwriters met this challenge with a combination of strategies. First, borrow the main plot of underworld feud from The Godfather. Next, add a story line of an entrancing woman (and cast an entrancing actress for the role). Then, package the story into an ensemble type of performance arena where the audience can enjoy watching a good number of different roles, major as well as minor. Finally, move the story towards a monumental backdrop, the return of sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997. The result: an immensely watchable movie and a deserving prequel to the first Infernal Affair.
While I.A. 2 does not pretend to be a `Godfather', the movie does earn our respect, right from the opening shots, by demonstrating the meticulous efforts put into its production. Anthony Wong seems to be delivering a monologue, but is actually talking with Eric Tsang in a spartanly furnished room. Facing Wong, on the far wall, hangs a clock. As Wong's is shot from various angles, the tic-toc sound of the clock moves around the cinema, left, right, front and back, in relation to the angle of the shot. This is the technical aspect. This opening dialogue is also of paramount importance as it underpins the main theme of this prequel. What Wong says here explains his dark side not seen in I.A. 1, in a startling revelation later. In the brief synopsis that follows, I'll continue to use the performers' names instead of the characters', for simplicity.
(synopsis starts)
The story happens in three time slots, 1991, 1995 and 1997 (aptly correlated with the size of the mobile phones seen in the movie). Young Edison Chan's assassination of an underworld boss makes a blood bath seem unavoidable, in sparkling a feud among four lieutenants. However, thing are swiftly brought under control at the emergence of the victim's son Francis Ng, who, skilfully manipulating the four, put them in their place again. There is actually a fifth, Eric Tsang who has been most loyal to the dead boss. The irony is that the killing has been ordered secretly by his woman, Carina Lau, who thinks that Tsang should really be the man at the top. On the law enforcers' side, Anthony Wong sets up Shawn Yu (Tong Leung in I.A. 1) as a mole in Ng's gang, knowing that Yu is actually Ng's half-brother but trusting his intention to be a `good man'. At the same time, Chan (Andy Lau in I.A. 1) joins the police force as the gangster's undercover, as we have already seen in I.A. 1.
Fast forward 4 years, we see Ng, ready to clean up his house by getting rid of `the four', taking Tsang into his confidence. A startling revelation is now made to the audience: while Lau ordered the assassination 4 years ago, she had a corroborator: inspector Wong. Ng has actually found out about this and vows to revenge his beloved father's death on both Lau and Tsang, even though he knows that the latter was really innocent. On the pretext of sending Tsang to Thailand to set up some cocaine business, Ng intends to send him to meet his death. Simultaneously, by a brilliant double play, he eliminates `the four' and at the same time reveals to the police evidence of Wong's conspiracy in killing his father. We then see Tsang in a tight spot in Thailand but are not shown what eventually happens. In Hong Kong, Chan, who has all this time been a secret admirer of Lau, shields her from Ng's revenge (Ng does not know that Chan is the actual killer of his father). But when he fails to win her heart, Chan betrays Lau, sending her to her death in the hands of Ng's gunmen.
In 1997, approaching Hong Kong's historical moment, Wong is pardoned by the police as they need capable men like him to continue combating the underworld. He goes to Thailand to see Tsang whom we find had not been killed after all. In this prequel they are friends despite being in opposite camps, and have a common enemy in Ng. Back in Hong Kong, they continue to try to spin web around Ng, but find that all they have been able to lay their hands on will only put him behind bars for a few years, which is clearly not enough for Tsang for avenging his woman. Without going into details, it suffices to say that Tsang manages a plot that corners Ng, getting him eventually killed by the police.
(synopsis ends)
In this brief synopsis, I have left out a lot of details as well as some characters such as To Man-chat, who plays a less comic role here than in I.A. 1 and Wu Jun, mainland Chinese star playing Wong's partner and buddy. I want to mention also Roy Cheung (one of the five gunmen in Johnny To's masterpiece `The Mission' (1999)) who, without a single line here, has such a screen presence that leaves quite an impression.
I mentioned at the beginning that the main challenge of this movie is to strike a balance between having its own life and yet maintaining a link with I.A. 1. Let's look at each of these two aspects.
The new life is in the two new characters who could easily have been in a different story. The beauty is that they can be killed off (and they both ended up exactly that way), and the audience would expect some deaths in a crime yarn. Ng's story line, as mentioned, is primarily from Godfather. Ng, well known for his explosive screen image, is a completely different man here, composed, calculating, and it does not take a film critic or movie reviewer to see the resemblance to Michael Corleone. His story fuels the main plot of I.A. 2, giving it a life independent from the first one. Complementing this independence is Carina Lau, who adds glamour as well as femininity to enrich the movie's content. The scantily depicted but genuinely felt love between the visually most unlikely pair of Lau and Tsang is actually quite moving.
As to the link with the first one, the 4 key characters Wong, Tsang, Chan (young Andy Lau) and Yu (young Tony Leung) have received varying treatments. Unlike before (or afterwards, if that make more sense to your temporal awareness), Wong and Tsang are friends here. I think this arrangement is quite deliberate for the obvious reason that watching them in the same old conflict as in I.A. 1 wouldn't exactly be a thrill to the audience. Tsang plays a much more passive and subdued role throughout most of the movie. It isn't until after Lau has been killed by Ng that he fires up. Wong, on the other hand, is much more controversial displaying a dark side of his character, which the movie tries to explain in his opening dialogue about witnessing on his first beat the violent death of his superior under the hands of a mobster. The situation reminds me of the old Hollywood westerns, in which the invariable commandment was `thou shalt not take the law into thy own hands' no matter how evil the criminal is. Wong, gnawed by the torturing frustration from seeing the killer freed after just a few years, does take the law into his own hands. Of the two young ones, Edison Chan has considerably more to do in depicting the formation of Andy Lau's character. Chan has displayed a maturing self-assurance, particularly in that charming, almost child-like smile behind which hides a chilling soul. Shawn Yu on the other hand does not leave that much of an impression.
One more point and I'm done. The makers of the movie spared no pain in employing a staggering variety of background music. Choral chants are used lavishly, as are solo piano and guitar. Pulsating strings and urgent percussions are employed as usual in building up climaxes. Even the harmonic comes into play, and this one actually on screen at the conclusion of the extermination of `the four'. If I seem to make it sound as though background music has been over used, this is not my intention. Rather, they are employed skilfully and tastefully, contributing considerably to the success of the movie.
Infernal Affair created a box office miracle in Hong Kong last year not because it is a particularly brilliant film, but because of the lame comparisons that went on before. Still, I.A. is a solid piece of work which, coupled with the hype that has been building up, becomes quite an act to follow. For I.A. 2 the scriptwriters' task is to strike a good balance of giving a life of its own and yet preserving an adequate link with the first one. The challenge is compounded by the fact that this is a prequel, dictating that the audience would know that the people they've seen before are not going to die here, a rather irritating handicap for a crime story.
The scriptwriters met this challenge with a combination of strategies. First, borrow the main plot of underworld feud from The Godfather. Next, add a story line of an entrancing woman (and cast an entrancing actress for the role). Then, package the story into an ensemble type of performance arena where the audience can enjoy watching a good number of different roles, major as well as minor. Finally, move the story towards a monumental backdrop, the return of sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997. The result: an immensely watchable movie and a deserving prequel to the first Infernal Affair.
While I.A. 2 does not pretend to be a `Godfather', the movie does earn our respect, right from the opening shots, by demonstrating the meticulous efforts put into its production. Anthony Wong seems to be delivering a monologue, but is actually talking with Eric Tsang in a spartanly furnished room. Facing Wong, on the far wall, hangs a clock. As Wong's is shot from various angles, the tic-toc sound of the clock moves around the cinema, left, right, front and back, in relation to the angle of the shot. This is the technical aspect. This opening dialogue is also of paramount importance as it underpins the main theme of this prequel. What Wong says here explains his dark side not seen in I.A. 1, in a startling revelation later. In the brief synopsis that follows, I'll continue to use the performers' names instead of the characters', for simplicity.
(synopsis starts)
The story happens in three time slots, 1991, 1995 and 1997 (aptly correlated with the size of the mobile phones seen in the movie). Young Edison Chan's assassination of an underworld boss makes a blood bath seem unavoidable, in sparkling a feud among four lieutenants. However, thing are swiftly brought under control at the emergence of the victim's son Francis Ng, who, skilfully manipulating the four, put them in their place again. There is actually a fifth, Eric Tsang who has been most loyal to the dead boss. The irony is that the killing has been ordered secretly by his woman, Carina Lau, who thinks that Tsang should really be the man at the top. On the law enforcers' side, Anthony Wong sets up Shawn Yu (Tong Leung in I.A. 1) as a mole in Ng's gang, knowing that Yu is actually Ng's half-brother but trusting his intention to be a `good man'. At the same time, Chan (Andy Lau in I.A. 1) joins the police force as the gangster's undercover, as we have already seen in I.A. 1.
Fast forward 4 years, we see Ng, ready to clean up his house by getting rid of `the four', taking Tsang into his confidence. A startling revelation is now made to the audience: while Lau ordered the assassination 4 years ago, she had a corroborator: inspector Wong. Ng has actually found out about this and vows to revenge his beloved father's death on both Lau and Tsang, even though he knows that the latter was really innocent. On the pretext of sending Tsang to Thailand to set up some cocaine business, Ng intends to send him to meet his death. Simultaneously, by a brilliant double play, he eliminates `the four' and at the same time reveals to the police evidence of Wong's conspiracy in killing his father. We then see Tsang in a tight spot in Thailand but are not shown what eventually happens. In Hong Kong, Chan, who has all this time been a secret admirer of Lau, shields her from Ng's revenge (Ng does not know that Chan is the actual killer of his father). But when he fails to win her heart, Chan betrays Lau, sending her to her death in the hands of Ng's gunmen.
In 1997, approaching Hong Kong's historical moment, Wong is pardoned by the police as they need capable men like him to continue combating the underworld. He goes to Thailand to see Tsang whom we find had not been killed after all. In this prequel they are friends despite being in opposite camps, and have a common enemy in Ng. Back in Hong Kong, they continue to try to spin web around Ng, but find that all they have been able to lay their hands on will only put him behind bars for a few years, which is clearly not enough for Tsang for avenging his woman. Without going into details, it suffices to say that Tsang manages a plot that corners Ng, getting him eventually killed by the police.
(synopsis ends)
In this brief synopsis, I have left out a lot of details as well as some characters such as To Man-chat, who plays a less comic role here than in I.A. 1 and Wu Jun, mainland Chinese star playing Wong's partner and buddy. I want to mention also Roy Cheung (one of the five gunmen in Johnny To's masterpiece `The Mission' (1999)) who, without a single line here, has such a screen presence that leaves quite an impression.
I mentioned at the beginning that the main challenge of this movie is to strike a balance between having its own life and yet maintaining a link with I.A. 1. Let's look at each of these two aspects.
The new life is in the two new characters who could easily have been in a different story. The beauty is that they can be killed off (and they both ended up exactly that way), and the audience would expect some deaths in a crime yarn. Ng's story line, as mentioned, is primarily from Godfather. Ng, well known for his explosive screen image, is a completely different man here, composed, calculating, and it does not take a film critic or movie reviewer to see the resemblance to Michael Corleone. His story fuels the main plot of I.A. 2, giving it a life independent from the first one. Complementing this independence is Carina Lau, who adds glamour as well as femininity to enrich the movie's content. The scantily depicted but genuinely felt love between the visually most unlikely pair of Lau and Tsang is actually quite moving.
As to the link with the first one, the 4 key characters Wong, Tsang, Chan (young Andy Lau) and Yu (young Tony Leung) have received varying treatments. Unlike before (or afterwards, if that make more sense to your temporal awareness), Wong and Tsang are friends here. I think this arrangement is quite deliberate for the obvious reason that watching them in the same old conflict as in I.A. 1 wouldn't exactly be a thrill to the audience. Tsang plays a much more passive and subdued role throughout most of the movie. It isn't until after Lau has been killed by Ng that he fires up. Wong, on the other hand, is much more controversial displaying a dark side of his character, which the movie tries to explain in his opening dialogue about witnessing on his first beat the violent death of his superior under the hands of a mobster. The situation reminds me of the old Hollywood westerns, in which the invariable commandment was `thou shalt not take the law into thy own hands' no matter how evil the criminal is. Wong, gnawed by the torturing frustration from seeing the killer freed after just a few years, does take the law into his own hands. Of the two young ones, Edison Chan has considerably more to do in depicting the formation of Andy Lau's character. Chan has displayed a maturing self-assurance, particularly in that charming, almost child-like smile behind which hides a chilling soul. Shawn Yu on the other hand does not leave that much of an impression.
One more point and I'm done. The makers of the movie spared no pain in employing a staggering variety of background music. Choral chants are used lavishly, as are solo piano and guitar. Pulsating strings and urgent percussions are employed as usual in building up climaxes. Even the harmonic comes into play, and this one actually on screen at the conclusion of the extermination of `the four'. If I seem to make it sound as though background music has been over used, this is not my intention. Rather, they are employed skilfully and tastefully, contributing considerably to the success of the movie.