Infernal Affairs - HKNEO Reviews

INFERNAL AFFAIRS (2002-HK)
review by Neo

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Simply a tight and tense masterpiece!
After being quite lazy and siting back by taking a back seat and relax and whatever, by letting Seraph take over my role, slowly and finally I have churned out a new review, and guess what movie that is, well, I am just stating the obvious now as obviously you are reading this review - Infernal Affairs. But I was just making sure, so do I like this movie, well you must be joking to ask that question, because I just love the movie. Not only does it strikingly stand out of the pack of 2002 HK movies, not including Hero, it is also strikingly original in its own way. Sure, many critics had argue about its borrowing between Hollywood's Heat and John Woo's Hard Boiled, but what made this movie an original movie is not the concept but the way the director execute a dated concept into a brilliant commercial yet intellectual flick. Discussing a movie is not really based on anything in a Neo's review, but only one thing really ultimately counts the feeling and thus my honest opinion. For someone who has admire Tony Leung Chiu Wai's acting ever seen Hard Boiled, it is hard to imagine me preferring Andy Lau's performance better, and you are dead right, after repeated viewings, I still feel that Tony outshined Andy by quite a huge stepping stone. That's not to say Andy was crap, but after Running Out of Time, Andy is clearly a good actor in his own right, but somehow, Tony is just on another unreachable level who can simply uses his eyes to tell a thousand words. Yeah, I know I am bias, but I think almost all of you will agree with me that Tony is probably the best actor out of HK for quite a long time (I know you will be thinking about Chow Yun Fat right now, but that's another story).

Really, why should I bother talking about the acting rather than the movie, but the very fact is that this movie is very much character driven, but without the pitch perfect direction, then the movie will not be a classic. However, it is the performances that made the movie such a memorable feast and able to withstand repeated viewings and the good news is that it only gets better. So should I even talk about the story of this movie when almost all of you have already seen it, I think not, as I will be wasting my precious time doing so, repeating and repeating some dunno words about the movie. So where was I up to?

I rate it 10/10