Post 2
2
plain
2018-12-07T19:39:06-08:00
Infernal Affairs was a very compelling and interesting movie which I thoroughly enjoyed. Though in the beginning I was confused on who was working for whom, it became clear as I continued watching and left me on the edge of my seat until the very end. Lau and Chen were the two main characters and often times it was hard to tell which one was the protagonist and which was the antagonist. Strictly based on the plot, someone would think that Lau was the antagonist, working undercover for the triad while Chen was the protagonist, working undercover for the police. While I found Chen to be more of a protagonist than Lau, it started to be more and more unclear which side Lau stood for. We see Lau with his wife moving in and see him as a person and more than his work. The first scene I saw with him and his wife moving in started to get me to root for him. However, he would continue to do things for his original mission, working undercover for the triad. Most movies have a clear picture of good and bad but in this one, I think the only thing that is clear is that there is a lot of gray area. This movie was released shortly after Hong Kong’s handover of their sovereignty from Britain to China. This historical context plays a big role in shaping this Hong Kong made film. In The Violence of Time and Memory Undercover: Hong Kong’s Infernal Affairs, Wing-Sang Law puts the 1997 politics of Hong Kong in perspective while closely analyzing the film. Law writes about various ways in which the film symbolizes and comments on the Hong Kong politics of the time from the scenery to the genre. His section about double identity stood out to me the most because this is closely related to Hong Kong and their uncertain national identity, something that was being split and controlled by other forces.
