Martin Scorsese’s The Departed was famously based on Infernal Affairs – the Andy Lau and Tony Leung movie that ‘saved Hong Kong cinema’

Dec 12 , 2020

From left, Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau Tak-wah in the original Infernal Affairs, a high point in Hong Kong cinema of the 21st century. Photo: Media Asia Distribution

The Sars coronavirus, Asian financial crisis, post-handover angst and John Woo’s outlandish Nicolas Cage thriller Face/Off all set the tone for Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s award-winning police and triad drama, which would inspire an Oscar-winning Hollywood remake

It’s been 18 years since Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak Siu-fai’s award-winning police drama Infernal Affairs hit Hong Kong cinema screens. Starring idols Andy Lau Tak-wah and Tony Leung Chiu-wai, the movie examined the tortured lives of a policeman forced to live undercover among the triads, and a triad member forced to live a life as a mole in the Hong Kong Police Force.

The film was a huge success. It reinvigorated Hong Kong cinema – demonstrating that even after the glory days of the 1980s and 90s the city could still produce top quality films – spawned two sequels, and was remade for Hollywood by legendary director Martin Scorsese as the Oscar-winning The Departed.

Infernal Affairs’ origins can be traced to another Hong Kong director – John Woo. Having proven himself the undisputed king of action, Woo left for Hollywood prior to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. After middling success with Hard Target and Broken Arrow, Woo scored his first major hit in the West with the release of Face/Off, an action classic that featured all of the director’s stylistic hallmarks in an outlandish tale of a cop and gangster literally swapping faces.

It was from this crazy concept that Infernal Affairs was born.

“Around 1998, I saw Face/Off, and I really liked that movie,” Mak told Hong Kong CineMagic back in 2003. “With that movie as inspiration, I began to start to think about a story in which two people swap identities.”

Wisely, the co-directors ditched the more far-fetched elements of Woo’s story, opting instead for a more subtle role reversal and a set of moral ambiguities that helped elevate Infernal Affairs above the average police drama.

Yet even if Face/Off was the more immediate inspiration, both Mak and Lau had showed an interest in the concept of police officers working undercover in previous films.

In 1994 Lau directed To Live and Die in Tsimshatsui, which starred Canto-pop “Heavenly King” Jacky Cheung as a police officer working inside the triads. As the film progressed towards its climax, Cheung’s character had to decide whether to uphold the law and side with a boss he loathed or back the gangsters who were treating him like family.