Monday, March 21, 2005

Infernal Affairs II

If the jury has been out on prequels it may roll back in to deliver its verdict this summer when Revenge of the Sith is released. (The previous two movies were really just pre-prequels.)

Watching Infernal Affairs II I found myself asking whether the original movie always left room for this? (And what of Infernal Affairs III?) The cool and confusing narrative and style is reprised. Although the younger selves of the two moles reappear, the central and clearly rotational symmetry is now between the triad boss Sam and Inspector Wong. Sam is made more impishly appealing, while Wong, still looking like an agent from The Matrix, is shown to be somewhat flawed.

Some of the detail added here will increase your understanding of later events, others add enjoyment only by stealing it from your memories of the first film. Knowing that Wong and Yan died in the original is part of the problem of all prequels. With it's melodrama and eschatological undertones the producers possibly felt they had found Hong Kong's answer to The Godfather, but the second film in that series cleverly blended prequel and sequel elements and didn't rquire us to engage with the fates of characters whose demises we had already witnessed.

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