Infernal Affairs II (2003)
Reviewed by: dandan on 2011-02-24
Summary: only the good die young...
with lau (edison chen) joining the police and starting his rise through the ranks and chan (shawn yu) being turfed out of the police, to begin his life as a mole in the triads, the world they are entering in to is given some flesh. on one hand we have sp wong (anthony wong) and sp luk (hu jun) fighting the triads, with dirty tricks. on the other hand we have ngai (francis ng), sam's (eric tsang) boss and chan's half brother, attempting to maintain power after his father is murdered...

so, yep, a sequel that's a prequel. now, i have quite fond memories of this film, having seen it a while after the first one and being quite happy that it focussed on wong, ng and tsang. that's no bad thing and it keeps the spotlight off shawn yu, who does a reasonable job and glorified coat hanger, edison chen, who is hardly present. unfortunately, watching this with the first film fresh in my mind has probably ruined it for me.

basically, the attempts to build up the characters, who we were introduced to in the first film, backfires in a spectacular fashion and they manufacture a set of people who bear very little relation to those who feature in the first film. sam is set up as someone who would never let chan get close to him, then there's the chan / wong dynamic, which is almost stretched to breaking point and is left looking like it would never evolve into what we know it does. the only character who maintains any kind of consistency is lau and this is only due to the fact that he's in it so little that he doesn't get the chance to.

any hoo, disregarding what a stupid attempt at a prequel this is and looking at it as a standalone piece, what you have is a pretty solid, entertaining film. it's less polished than the first film, in terms of narrative, and it seems to be trying to make itself seem more epic than it is, with some unnecessary cinematographic masturbation, but it is still a well played out, very watchable affair.

so, a dreadful prequel, but good as an entity in its own right.