8.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Two undercover moles—a police officer assigned to infiltrate a ruthless triad by posing as a gangster, and a gangster who becomes a police officer in order to serve as a spy for the underworld—find themselves locked in a deadly game of cat and mouse, each racing against time to unmask the other.
Starring: Andy Lau, Anthony Chau-Sang Wong, Eric Tsang, Kelly Chen (I), Sammi ChengForeign | 100% |
Drama | 49% |
Crime | 22% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.34:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Cantonese: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English, English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Oh, for those thrilling days of yesteryear when good was good, evil was evil, and the heroes and villains made it all easy by wearing white and black hats. Moral certainty has obviously gone the way of the dinosaur, at least for films like Infernal Affairs, which has so many characters at cross purposes and with conflicting motives that had they all been wearing hats, they no doubt would have been uniformly gray. Infernal Affairs was a sensation in 2002 when it was released in Hong Kong and it went on to provide the inspiration for the film that finally won Martin Scorsese a Best Director Academy Award, The Departed. If you’ve seen The Departed, Infernal Affairs makes a fascinating Ur-experience, as if some archival version of the Scorsese film had been unearthed and suddenly provided an alternate universe version of the basic storyline. If you haven’t seen The Departed, at least some aspects of Infernal Affairs might initially be confusing, as this film whizzes by at the cinematic equivalent of the speed of sound, and the conflicting motives and interrelationships of several of the characters can take a second viewing to completely unravel. Director Andrew Lau wastes absolutely no time in this film, providing a brisk prologue (which might not be completely clear to first time viewers) that sets up the two main characters, Chan (ultimately played by Tony Leung) and Lau (ultimately played by Andy Lau, not the same as the director), shown here in their relative youths and set up as rival “moles,” each unaware of the other. Chan is shown to have been deceptively “expelled” from the police force, when in actuality he’s been recruited to go undercover and infiltrate the triad crime organization run by local mob boss Hon Sam (Eric Tsang). At the same time, Hon himself has recruited a whole slew of young men he’s set up to infiltrate the police, chief among them Lau. The bulk of the film takes place a few years later, after Chan is well ensconced in the criminal underworld and Lau has climbed the ranks of the police force and is a trusted Senior Inspector.
Infernal Affairs is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.34:1. This is a weirdly shoddy looking Blu-ray that is plagued with noise, digital sharpening and a just kind of ugly look that may argue that the source elements were not all they might have been, despite the film's relatively recent vintage. Some of the film looks quite good, oddly the opening credits sequence being one of the standout segments. Some of the close-ups in outside locations also pop with abundant clarity and fine detail. But large swaths of the film are just bathed in noise that begins to approach the look of swarms of locusts, things are quite soft generally while having the odd addition of edge enhancement offering considerable haloing at times, and despite overall strong color and decent contrast, this is somewhat of a disappointing Blu- ray debut for a film that has such an impressive pedigree and influence.
Infernal Affairs has two lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio options, one in the original Cantonese and the other a fairly useless English dub. To dispense with the English dub first off, it's mixed obscenely loudly (just toggle back and forth between the English and Cantonese mixes for a quick example of this), and the dub frequently has little to do with the original Cantonese dialogue, at least judging by the subtitles. The Cantonese mix on the other hand is incredibly robust (without being overly loud), with some fantastic directionality with a wealth of ambient environmental effects and several great action sequences. Dialogue is clear and well prioritized, and the film has some aggressive use of LFE in several sequences. Dynamic range is surprisingly wide in this film, which has several quieter dialogue moments interspersed with the more action-heavy sequences.
If you're a fan of The Departed, you'll probably really enjoy seeing the film that inspired Scorsese's remake. This original version may not be as nuanced as Scorsese's film, but in a way it's more visceral, due partly to its breakneck pace, but also due to the fact that it doesn't spend a lot of time psychoanalyzing these characters (despite Chan being in therapy). Instead the viewer is simply presented with the cold, hard facts of two men who are each pretending to be something that they're not as the noose is tightening around both of them. Some may actually prefer the alternate ending presented as a supplement here to the one actually in the film, which is a bit hard to swallow in terms of what we've seen gone down between these two moles. The big issue with regard to this Blu-ray is the image quality, which is surprisingly shoddy at times. But taken as a whole, and with the bombastic audio helping to tip the scales at least a little in the opposite direction, this release comes Recommended.
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