"Infernal Affairs" is best known in the West as the film that Martin Scorsese remade as "The Departed" in 2006. As I've often said, I think that one of the best ways of understanding more about the ways films work (and don't work) is by studying an original and a remake comparatively. I may have loved "Psycho" since I first saw it as a teen, but watching Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot remake helped me appreciate even more and in much clearer detail quite how Hitchcock's original worked - largely by doing everything (and I mean everything) the same but worse.
The relationship between "Infernal Affairs" and "The Departed" is of course very different, as the original is a taut, effective Hong Kong thriller and the re-make is a creation of one of the greatest directors of all time, culturally transposed with great skill by writer William Monahan into the down-and-dirty world of the Irish-American underworld and Whitey Bulger's Boston.
"The Departed" follows the same narrative arc as the original quite closely, though with much more in the way of subplot and more time spent on the texture of both characters and setting. In both films, two young men begin on diametrically opposite life paths (one a member of a powerful gang, the other a gifted police cadet) and at a critical moment early in their lives switch over. The upcoming gang member joins the academy and becomes a mole inside the police department for the gang boss. Meanwhile, the police cadet is put under deep cover (a cover that includes him being very publicly expelled from said academy) and is planted inside the very gang his counterpart originates from.
To complicate matters further, after 10 years of following the same tracks, the gang and the police clash in a life-or-death struggle for power. Not only that, both gang and police become almost simultaneously aware that they have an informant from the other side undermining them. And as fate and script would have it, in both cases it's that very informant on each side who is most trusted by their leader and tasked with hunting down the mole within - i.e. themselves. It's a hell of a conceit, but in both films, it's one that is efficiently and entertainingly set up and we are quickly sucked past any disbelief we might have and drawn into the endless narrative possibilities and dramatic tensions that the scenario creates as the game is played out.
And yet, the differences between the two films - their philosophical and cultural takes on the same narrative - is made immediately clear in the opening minutes of each movie and emphasized again in their closing frames.
"The Departed" starts with the voice of Jack Nicholson's master criminal describing his philosophy of crime and power, laced with bigotry and contempt, over a montage of Jack at work being his evil self. The film ends (no spoiler here) with a shot of a rat scurrying past a window. By contrast, "Infernal Affairs" (whose Chinese title literally translates as "The Unceasing Path") begins and ends with imagery of traditional Buddhist sculptures and quotes from the sutras about the worst of the eight Hells being 'Continuous Hell.'
"The Departed" positions itself as grim and grimy but darkly comedic, complete with a visually punning punchline that could not be more on-the-nose. "Infernal Affairs," though definitely hinting at the bitter comedy of its set-up is much more concerned with the tragedy of each character, stuck in the continuous hell of living a life-sized lie that they cannot truly extricate themselves from.
"Infernal Affairs" is strengthened by all-round great performances for all the major players, very much including Eric Tsang as the shrewd and brazen gang boss and Anthony Wong as the police handler, absolutely dedicated to the mission but with real human sympathy for his undercover agent. Andy Lau is great as the corrupt Inspector Lau, a man who is used to enjoying respect and confidence from his colleagues and his fiancee, but who is constantly aware that his world may melt down at any time. Best of all is Tony Leung as undercover agent Chen, who combines a sense of bone-deep world-weariness living in a job that gives him neither prestige nor security with a sense of real human warmth and a deeply ironic appreciation of the absurdity of his situation.
"The Departed" is a ballsy, well-crafted movie with images that are hard to forget but in the end I much preferred "Infernal Affairs." Where Scorsese's remake twists and turns itself over and over to the point of absurdist existentialism, the original never loses focus on its narrative and tells a much more authentically human story with admirable economy. This difference isn't just subjective - at two-and-a-half hours, "The Departed" goes on for an exhausting 50 minutes longer than the lean 100 minutes of the original. I think that that sense of exhaustion and the absurd futility of it all is quite deliberate on Scorsese and Monahan's part, but I felt much more invested and excited by the efficient pace of the original.
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