The Departed is the only movie I’ve seen on the big screen while I’ve been in Hong Kong. First-run theaters with v.o. are just too far away. It was pretty good. Last night, though, I finally saw the first installment of the trilogy on which it’s based (Infernal Affairs), a Hong Kong movie.
I think I like Infernal better. It gets rid of all that character-developing fluff, leaving the question of whom to side with more ambiguous: I knew which character I should like from Departed, which really hammered it in, but I’d be less sure if I were watching Infernal first. That’s probably the intended effect. There was also the gee-whiz factor of recognizing places (Tuen Mun gets props in the first lines of the movie)… but I think it’s just a better movie. It’s interesting that the forgone conclusion of a tidy, “happy” ending, supposedly insisted on by American audiences, was in the case of Infernal insisted on by Mainland censors for their version of the film. The American ending is partially redeemed by the fact that Marky Mark in his bunny suit is carrying it out, but I like the Hong Kong ending much better.
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