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Two cops on opposite sides of the law face off in Infernal Affairs, a gripping psychological thriller from Hong Kong. Detective Yan (Tony Leung) is an undercover narc who has spent ten years of his life infiltrating one of the city's most notorious triad gangs. Detective Ming (Andy Lau) is a bent copper working on the inside as a mole for the same gang. Each knows that the other man exists, but neither knows the other's identity. At least, not yet...

Lacking the balletic gunplay we've come to expect from the East, this is an ambitious attempt to rewrite the rulebook of Hong Kong cinema. And it's refreshing enough to make up for its occasional missteps in the storytelling department. Phenomenally successful at home, it's already spawned two sequels and been picked up for a Hollywood remake (with Martin Scorsese currently set to direct).

"FEVERISH INTENSITY"

As the punning English title hints, the psychological tension derives from the characters' tortuously untenable situations. Opening with a Buddhist quotation about the lowest level of hell, a place of continuous suffering, it's pretty clear that directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak want us to see that Ming and Yan are trapped in a hell of their own making. Two sides of the same coin (Ming/Yan - Yin/Yang), these men are on the verge of losing their very identities through the stresses of their deep cover roles.

Pursuing each other with a feverish intensity that's less cat and mouse than two rats trapped in a cage, Infernal Affairs stokes the good cop/bad cop tension to boiling point. Yet while its breathless excitement rarely falters, it never quite convinces that its mythic undertones are any more insightful than the navel-gazing talky bits in a John Woo movie. The jittery, amphetamine-crazed editing may dazzle, but blink and you'll miss nothing much.

In Cantonese with English subtitles.