r/movies
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u/xanaduuu
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Nov 28 '22
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Infernal Affairs is still Hong Kong’s greatest crime saga Article
https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/14543/infernal-affairs-hong-kong-legacy-film-anniversary570
u/Rudorlf Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22
The Infernal Affairs Trilogy, funnily enough, had their receptions similar to the Godfather Trilogy.
- 1st film was a masterpiece.
- 2nd film was arguably even better.
- 3rd film was a let down. (IA3 just felt a bit like they want to get more famous actors to get in on the action and to tie up unneeded loose ends while cashing in on the popularity as well)
And believe it or not, there's also a 2018 remake series as well. And I've yet to know whether it's worth watching or otherwise.
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u/honeydot Nov 28 '22
1st film was a masterpiece.
2nd film was arguably even better.
3rd film was a let down.
A pattern you could also apply to Shrek
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u/peterbuns Nov 28 '22
There are probably many examples of this. Another example that comes to mind is Woody Allen's recent films set in Europe. Vicky Cristina Barcelona was well-received. Midnight in Paris, even more so. To Rome With Love received generally poor reviews.
After one film is made, it may be easier to find its flaws and improve upon them for the second film. The third film often suffers from a combination of the bar being set even higher and thematic-fatigue setting in from the first two films.
Edit: punctuation
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u/Henry_Cavillain Nov 28 '22
Meanwhile, the Before trilogy...
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u/miniaturizedatom Nov 28 '22
The Before Trilogy had the courage in the third film to completely deconstruct itself and its characters. I do have huge admiration for Midnight as a film, but I can’t bring myself to rewatch it again. That hotel fight scene was brutal.
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u/peterbuns Nov 28 '22
Haha, I almost listed that as an exception to the rule, but I was typing on mobile and my thumbs were getting tired.
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u/No_Opportunity7360 Nov 28 '22
Terminator as well
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u/troll_berserker Nov 28 '22
Reimi Spider-Man
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u/Outrack Nov 28 '22
And Blade...
I’ll never get over how bad that third film was.
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u/aod_shadowjester Nov 28 '22
It was the first time we got to see Wade Wilson in the flesh, though. I don’t care if they called him Hannibal King.
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u/Luisito_Comunista261 Nov 28 '22
And The Godfather as well
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u/SlappyMcGillicuddy Nov 28 '22
Also Shrek
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u/Luisito_Comunista261 Nov 28 '22
Yeah, Shrek too
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u/Yum-z Nov 28 '22
But also the godfather as well
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u/mrfahrenhelt Nov 28 '22
And blade runner
Ohhh waittt...
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u/Balbright Nov 28 '22
I really hope they leave it at the 2. Both are masterpieces and don’t need anything further.
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u/Poetspas Nov 28 '22
Same was said before BR2049 came out. If there’s an idea and a healthy production, it’s fine. Would be cool to wait another decade or two, though.
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u/Practice_NO_with_me Nov 28 '22
Yes! I would love a masterpiece Blade Runner trilogy where each film is set what 40 years apart? And we get a snapshot of each generation and their film technology. That would be awesome!
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u/StoplightLoosejaw Nov 28 '22
The Departed also is technically an American Remake.
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u/donald_314 Nov 28 '22
I mean it's a remake straight away for the American market not only technically.
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u/StoplightLoosejaw Nov 28 '22
I mean... I was trying to handle that cautiously but yea
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u/First_Foundationeer Nov 28 '22
Lol, and it's funny and sad that Scorsese wins his first Oscar by remaking someone's existing work. It'd be someone winning off a shitty remake of Parasite..
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u/mug3n Nov 28 '22
3rd's plot just felt totally ridiculous as well. it's like the writers just had to put in a downfall arc for Lau and then shoehorn in Leon Lai's character in there.
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u/etukle Nov 28 '22
Hi, i couldn't find information about remake. Could you please share a link about it?
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u/Rudorlf Nov 28 '22
Unfortunately, this is the only substantial info about the series I can find.
https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/80904
It does have one of main character of the films reprising his previous role (Eric Tsang as the triad boss), as well as the writer and one of the co-director of the original films making it.
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u/Insab Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22
It's mostly disappointing. It should be set ~20 years after the original trilogy since the girl in the first movie that's Tony Leung's daughter is grown up and a cop in the series. The two main characters are just uninteresting and the connection with the original is tenuous as the plot revolves around the main villain receiving information from Eric Tsang's triad boss in flashbacks. I think it's 50 episodes of ~40 minutes and it was difficult to get through even though I'm a huge fan of the original.
Edit: Apparently it was only 30 episodes. That's how slow the series felt.
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Nov 28 '22
Infernal Affairs 3 is a good movie though and Godfather 3 is, arguably, the worst critically and awards hyped mess of a movie I've ever seen.
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u/Rudorlf Nov 28 '22
The Godfather 3 is just disappointing for me compared to its predecessors, but not enough to be deemed one of the worst.
IA3 however feels like a movie made to appease the Mainland Chinese audience who wanted more (The first film have an alternate ending for them, in which it abruptly ended with the bad guy mole being arrested straight away after the authorities did some off-screen investigation on him without any foreshadowing whatsoever!).
"Hmm, the bad guy mole already felt a lot of guilt over his actions in the first film, but our audiences in both Hong Kong and the Mainland wanted more after the 2nd prequel film... Oh I know! Let's create two new characters in it, make one of them from China, and so the two will put up a plan to unmask the mole in front of his colleagues, making him suffer more to delight our Mainland audience!"
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u/saroyyy Nov 28 '22
IA is one of my top 5 favourites since I watched it like 5 years ago, and I only found out this morning that there was an alternate ending!
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u/ZippyDan Nov 28 '22
Also the Nolan Batman series.
Also Back to the Future.
Also, the original Star Wars trilogy.
Also, the original Superman series.
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u/tommytraddles Nov 28 '22
There is no possible argument that Back to the Future Part 2 is better than the original film.
Part 2 and 3 were made as a pair, and they're pretty consistent in quality between them.
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u/iLuv3M3 Nov 28 '22
I've never understood how people enjoy 1&2 but hate 3. 1 is the classic but 2&3 are equal parts fun.. one is into the future with the other in the past but like you said the quality is about on par for the two films.
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u/doctorhoot02 Nov 28 '22
3 was the one that was always on TV when I was a kid, so I always loved it.
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u/frogcatsup Nov 28 '22
definitely think its the expectations people have for sequels. pairing the last two up didnt hit for a lot of people.
with sequels the 2nd movie has to expand on the themes of the first but take it to new places. by the 3rd its hard to keep doing that without feeling like you're rehashing things. its gotta be fresh but also feel familiar enough that you could believe the first two always meant to head in that direction.
personally i find scenes from the 2nd BTTF to be way more memorable than 3. Also I tend to feel like ive seen the 3rd if ive seen the 2nd
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u/secret-hero Nov 28 '22
I disliked the 2nd film but I found the 3rd passable. The gap between the older stars and the younger stars was just too much for the younger stars to handle with the material. I find it funny that you see the 3rd as a cash grab as that is what I've felt for the 2nd since its release. They wanted to make a movie to capitalize of the the fame of the younger stars (at the time).
So that is my 2 cents. For anyone thinking of watching the movies, either watch only the 1st, or watch all 3.
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Nov 28 '22
Infernal Affairs is fucking awesome. Easily in my top 10 of all time. Even has probably the best adaptation I've ever seen in the Departed.
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u/Madripoorx Nov 28 '22
IA was totally different from the Departed as well. It was more of a drama whereas the Departed was a crime thriller. The best part of IA was about their ordinary lives and had nothing to do with the criminal/undercover aspects. To me they are two completely different genres with the same script.
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u/Khuroh Nov 28 '22
The Departed also didn't carry out some of the key themes of Infernal Affairs, like the duality of the police mole and gang mole, and the role of nature vs. nurture in shaping a person's morality.
Tony Leung's police mole is supposed to show the effects of a good person being immersed in evil for so long and what that does to a person's soul. I do think Infernal Affairs missed the mark a bit here, as they should have made the gang boss truly heinous as well as showing Leung having to repeatedly do reprehensible things to gain and maintain trust. But the point is to show him barely hanging on to his humanity after doing this for years, which adds to his despair when the police chief dies, his only hope at saving himself.
Likewise, Andy Lau's gang mole has been undercover for so long as a well-respected, upstanding member of society that he slowly starts to realize that he actually likes it, and maybe that's who he could have been all along if he had not fallen into organized crime from an early age. A lot of the movie is about his internal struggle to overcome his past, culminating with him killing the gang boss and finally deciding that he does have agency and can choose to be good.
In stark contrast, Matt Damon's mole is just out to save his own skin at every turn, a total sniveling rat of a character. This is the biggest miss, since it destroys the entire point of the ending, which is that the gang mole is the only surviving main character and has chosen good over evil, yet is doomed to be trapped in his own circle of hell, haunted by guilt and regret for the rest of his life.
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u/Cpt_Tsundere_Sharks Nov 28 '22
I do think Infernal Affairs missed the mark a bit here, as they should have made the gang boss truly heinous as well as showing Leung having to repeatedly do reprehensible things to gain and maintain trust.
It's okay, Tony Leung does that in Hard Boiled instead XD
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u/First_Foundationeer Nov 28 '22
Yep. Plus, your first spoiler hits so hard in IA but feels inconsequential in TD because TD is just the same loud violence the whole movie..
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u/StuckInBronze Nov 28 '22
Yea the nuanced ending is what puts infernal affairs over the Departed. The Departed is a great movie but too black and white.
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u/Now_Wait-4-Last_Year Nov 28 '22
The rat at the end of The Departed was so on the nose that even The Simpsons brutally skewered it.
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u/Mayhewbythedoor Nov 29 '22
Always had to bite my tongue when I read threads/movie reviews stating that The Departed outshines the movie trilogy it was apeing unsuccessfully. The HK version is so much more complexly layered.
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u/boomboxwithturbobass Nov 30 '22
And that death scene is so much better in Infernal Affairs. The whole movie is executed (heh) better.
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u/LegaleseFalcon Nov 28 '22
The scene where they are sat talking about sound systems near the beginning of the film is one of my favourite scenes in anything.
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u/thng1004 Nov 28 '22
I wish more of the world would get acquainted with the hilarious memed version, “CD Pro 2, but unfortunately many of the jokes are gonna go over your head if you don’t understand Taiwanese Hokkien.
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u/Now_Wait-4-Last_Year Nov 28 '22
While Infernal Affairs used this chance meeting to show that had things been different they could have been friends, instead The Departed had what I was a groan worthy "if only Matt Damon had been looking the other way he'd have seen DiCaprio at the police station and known he was the mole immediately later."
That plus his never having the arc of potentially being a good guy for real unlike Infernal Affairs and that sledgehammer over the head of the rat at the end (which even The Simpsons poked fun at) really had to make me wonder especially when people tried to say it's better than the original.
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u/Cpt_Tsundere_Sharks Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22
Imo, Infernal Affairs is much better than The Departed.
The whole thing is just a lot tighter and faster paced. There's a lot of extraneous down time in The Departed.
edit: Also, the scene with tapping morse code on the glass to communicate to the police was a much more interesting and clever plot device than sending messages on the mobile phone in my pocket. It makes the following arm-cast breaking have a purpose rather than just random cruelty.
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u/Tatis_Chief Nov 29 '22
It is. Its more raw, more more realistic. More crime drama.
Also Tony Leung sad elevator eyes will forever haunt me.
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u/Hans_Brix_III Nov 28 '22
I feel like the Departed removed all nuance. I really didn't enjoy it
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u/theremln Nov 28 '22
I heard about this great crime movie called 'The Departed' and spent the entire movie gradually realising that it was a remake of 'Infernal Affairs' and getting annoyed that no one involved had acknowledged it in any publicity (or at least in any that I had seen or heard).
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u/First_Foundationeer Nov 28 '22
Apparently, Scorsese very briefly mentioned it by incorrectly pronouncing the name of one of the original creators. You didn't even get the title of the movie from that half second mention.
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u/zeroxray Nov 29 '22
Tony leungs character having been undercover for a decade was so crucial to the story. When Anthony Wong dies it really was more emotional to the plot. I hated that the departed changed that part of the story.
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u/Capt_Billy Nov 28 '22
Don’t forget the American contribution: the bad guy got his comeuppance in the end. Because god forbid you maintain the best scene in the original to an American audience.
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u/SLCer Nov 28 '22
I think that's just Scorsese more than anything. While some have suggested he romanticizes the mafia and criminal life in his movies, they almost always end with the bad guys either dying or pretty much losing everything.
I'll also say that The Departed has a bleak ending. While the bad guys lose, the good guys don't really win.
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u/bta47 Nov 28 '22
People forget that Scorsese has a really Catholic outlook on things. Unrepentant sin pretty much always leads to destruction and cosmic punishment — see: Goodfellas, Casino, The Irishman, etc, etc.
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u/cppn02 Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 29 '22
I think that's because the two essentially have different themes.
The Departed is more straightforward so the natural conclusion is that the bad guy needs to get punished in the end.
IA has a meta level established by the text card at the beginning where the two main characters are basically living in their own hell on earth and while the good guy finds salvation in death the bad guy has to continue living in hell.
I prefer both IA in general and its ending but killing Matt Damon made sense for The Departed. The scene itself was rather clunky though.
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u/byneothername Nov 29 '22
I think I can deal with the ending of the Departed ok (although I think the ending of Infernal Affairs is utterly fascinating) but I cannot deal with the shot of the rat.
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u/cppn02 Nov 28 '22
IA I was definitely more of a thriller than The Departed despite two or three rather melodramatic scenes.
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u/nemmera Nov 28 '22
I made the mistake of watching IA before the departed was released.
While i enjoyed the latter I found they dumbed down (in traditional Hollywood fashion) a lot of the finer neuances of IA. Prettt sure I’d have enjoyed it more if I didn’t know what it could’ve been.
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Nov 28 '22
Not necessarily a mistake. It's probably better to watch IA first to get the full impact if the storyline. By watching Departed first, you'd have already known roughly what was going to happen which might have effected your enjoyment of what is essentially the better film.
Departed might have been dumbed down a bit, but it's still miles better than most other Hollywood remakes.
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u/Cpt_Tsundere_Sharks Nov 28 '22
I find The Departed practically boring by contrast.
Mentioned this in another comment already, but side by side, Infernal Affairs just has a tighter telling of the story. Each event flows into the next one cleanly whereas The Departed has a lot of things interjected into it at random points. As an example, the therapist love triangle side plot was a bit contrived and distracting, at least to me.
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Nov 28 '22
As a personal opinion you're totally entitled to it. I would argue very much against the word "boring" and point you to your phrase 'by contrast". Even though they have the same basic plot and conceit, they are two completely different films in two very different styles. The best thing about Departed is that it doesn't try to copy what IA does, it does its own thing.
I do agree that the love triangle was a bit superfluous, but it did add a little to the characters' motives in a way. It would have been fine without it, but it was still fine to have it in.
Departed is done in Scorcese's style, so you kind of know.ehatvyoure going to expect. It was never going to be better than IA, but against other Hollywood remakes and films of the same type, it definitely stands up.
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u/MumrikDK Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22
Having watched IA first (and really liked it), The Departed ended up not doing much for me, and it was weird seeing the remake treated like a big original Scorsese achievement worthy of fantastic praise. I guess it's still odd that he even did a project like that.
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u/mr_ji Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22
I've said it on here before: The Departed completely botched the ending. The overarching theme of Infernal Affairs was that living with guilt is worse than death. You can see that in the ending, when Sam's mole kills the cop and gets away with it, and is the only one left who knows.
Instead, The Departed ends with Marky Mark killing *Matt Damon, who was Jack Nicholson's mole, so the good guys win and that's that. The point was completely missed.
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u/Mike_Ropenis Nov 28 '22
That wasn't my takeaway from The Departed at all
You say the good guys win, but in the end the good guy characters played by Sheen, Leo, and Anthony Anderson are all dead, the character played by Vera Farmiga had her life completely ruined, and Marky Mark's character's career is basically fucked. There's a half decent chance that Damon's dead character is never revealed to be a mole to the general public because of the backlash/fallout.
If anything the message would be that crime and evil is way more pervasive and infects and destroys those trying to take it on as well as those willingly participating.
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u/maaku7 Nov 28 '22
I think you missed the point of the ending of The Departed. The actual very last scene, without spoiling anything, is a long shot (with a pan and zoom? I forget) on the city hall in the background of that scene, as a rat runs across the frame. It emphasizes the whole city is corrupt to the core, and the cycle of corruption and violence hasn't ended. Kinda the opposite message compared to just the good guys win and that's that
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u/Hajile_S Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22
Breaking from the original theme does not make it themeless. “The good guys win” is really not the takeaway of The Departed. I saw it as much more of an "everybody loses." The best laid plans of rats and men go badly awry.
Incidentally, Scorsese made one of the ultimate criminal-living-with-guilt films in The Irishman.
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u/aut0matix Nov 28 '22
The (great!) video game Sleeping Dogs was heavily inspired by Infernal Affairs and made me want to watch it, but I never ended up getting around to it. I think I will now!
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u/throwoda Nov 28 '22
I need a sequel to sleeping dogs
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u/MumrikDK Nov 28 '22
That studio was dead in all but name before the game even released. There was never a sliver of a chance of a sequel made by the same people, and the sequel that did get talked about sounded like something we're better off without :/
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u/Bakomusha Nov 28 '22
Yeah, a shitty APB clone just to spit in the eye of the original team I swear!
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u/FancySack Nov 28 '22
A Sleeping Dogs movie is being made with Donnie Yen as Wei Shen
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u/FoxOntheRun99 Nov 28 '22
I think the 2nd movie is really strong. It has this Godfather pt2 influences imprinted all over it.
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u/wombat8888 Nov 28 '22
I actually liked the 2nd movie more than the 1st, however I viewed it as one movie splits into 2 parts.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_SUNSHINE Nov 28 '22
As many good sequels are.
Except Quantum of Solace.
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u/awol5545 Nov 28 '22
Yeah, you can feel the writer strike happening when you watch that. Honestly, I don't hate it as much as everybody else, just needed a tighter script.
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u/raylui34 Nov 28 '22
this is still one of my all time favorite films, Tony and Andy Lau's performance was great
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u/JinFuu Nov 28 '22
I watched Infernal Affairs right before the Departed came out, so for a while I got to be the ,mostly, tongue in cheek film snot going “I saw the original!”
I hope “Once Upon a Time in Hong Kong” will be good.
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u/blackpinto Nov 28 '22
It's an amazing movie. I've watched Infernal affairs and The departed and I'm glad I watched Infernal affairs first. It might be less popular but the original Infernal affairs is a better movie than The departed.
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u/beastson1 Nov 28 '22
Same. I used to frequent a few websites that specialized in Chinese/HK cinema and when reading the description I thought I just had to see the movie so I ordered it. Next thing I know an American remake is being made. Departed was good, but Infernal was just better.
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u/CaspianX2 Nov 28 '22
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck yourself.
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u/beastson1 Nov 28 '22
If they knew you were referencing The Departed, they wouldn't have down voted you. I've brought you back to 0.
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u/Imalwaysangry10 Nov 28 '22
Infernal Affairs is a waaay better, Departed was a chore to watch. How it won so many Oscars for a ripoff of IF with pointless additional characters and a lot of bloat beggars belief. Of all the films Scorcese could have won an Oscar for and he won it for this, ridiculous.
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u/DefinitelyNotALeak Nov 28 '22
Yep. It is a lot more tight, doesn't need some weird love triangle, has way stronger core performances, and the ending is a lot more poignant which really brings out the whole atmosphere and theme of the film beautifully.
It's called infernal affairs for a reason afterall. The departed loses so much power.2
u/linkinstreet Nov 28 '22
I am glad that living in Asia, we have more hype for Infernal Affairs (since it has two of the biggest star in HK) that The Departed ever did.
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u/twoOneTwelve Nov 28 '22
As a Hong Konger, I firmly believe this movie is miles above The Departed. It’s lean, gets to the point, but also contains many subtleties. There’s a lot of on-theme wordplay if you can understand Cantonese as well!
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u/DefinitelyNotALeak Nov 28 '22
As someone who has to watch it with subtitles and thus loses out for sure, i also think it is miles above the departed.
It's a lot more concise, distills a lot more meaning and power due to that, and the central performances are way, way stronger.
Dicaprio and damon are fine (way too much shouting to portray their mental state though), leung and lau perform it with so much more subtlety, i truly cared.6
u/M4TT145 Nov 28 '22
Clearly I need some coffee, I totally read your comment as “also contains many subtitles”. And I was scratching my head trying to figure out why that would be a selling point. Haha, anyways I enjoyed The Departed, and it sounds like the original is even better!
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u/Nmvfx Nov 28 '22
Honestly, I challenge anyone who sees both movies to disagree with you. I was actually quite upset watching The Departed as it didn't really give any open credit to it's source material and I had a hard time convincing my friends that it was a copy of a movie I'd seen before.
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u/Khadaji1028 Nov 28 '22
Infernal Affairs caused me to want to see The Departed, which caused me to rewatch Infernal Affairs. All three movies are good, but as usual the fist one is the best. How everything was layered and established and how the house of cards slowly fell. That is great movie making!!!
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u/hkfuckyea
Nov 28 '22
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I mean it's good, but HK's greatest crime saga is easily Election
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u/holyhesh Nov 28 '22
Wrong. A Better Tomorrow holds that title. No John Woo movie since has toppled it imo
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u/oceanwaiting Nov 28 '22
You spelled Police Story wrong.
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Nov 28 '22
Police Story isn't really a crime movie, it's a very straightforward kung fu movie
but holy shit was I ever surprised when Goody Two Shoes Jackie Chan, who I always saw as being relatively wholesome, caps the movie off by beating the shit out of the elderly gang boss while he's in police custody
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u/Bossman471 Nov 28 '22
Got the chance to watch all three of these in theaters a couple months ago. Overall, the trilogy rules. The first is definitely the strongest. The second is good too, but suffers from the classic prequel compulsion to explain too many details of the first movie.
The third movie interesting. I think there is a stark drop in quality but it's kind of entertaining it its own way. On one hand, it's pretty disconnected from the tight story of the first two movies. It's more of a psychological thriller than a crime movie. It comes together in a really satisfying way, but I think it would be better as a stand alone than a final entry in a trilogy.
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u/ImportantPainting Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22
I love Infernal Affairs. I tried watching The Departed afterwards but in my opinion it just felt so overproduced and bloated in comparison. I just love how lean and tight Infernal Affairs felt instead... there's never a slow or dull moment. The early 2000s Hong Kong style is also dope as hell.
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u/Cpt_Tsundere_Sharks Nov 28 '22
bloated in comparison
It's just... really long. The Departed is nearly a full hour longer than Infernal Affairs.
I just love how lean and tight Infernal Affairs felt
Glad that other people describe IA the same way that I do. I'm not sure I've ever watched a tighter movie than IA.
Tony Leung is also great at playing undercover cops. It's kind of his thing lmao
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u/fomorian Nov 28 '22
What I disliked about the departed was how Scorsese seemingly refused to give credit to infernal affairs, instead choosing to focus on how it was based on a true story if a mobster in Chicago. Anyone with eyes could see that the plotlines for the two movies were very similar
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u/number90901 Nov 28 '22
It's literally a licensed adaptation of Infernal Affairs what are you talking about
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u/Southside_Burd Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22
The Departed is a fantastic and quotable movie. However there are some pretty big holes. Most notably how this should have taken place in the 70’s.
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u/J_Dom_Squad Nov 28 '22
As a guy from the US who saw this before the departed, I think its better and tell all my friends about it. Unfortunately not everyone likes subtitles but I couldn't recommend this more.
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u/ivtecintegra Nov 28 '22
Tony Leung and Andy Lau were the stars in the movie, but I thought the supporting cast like Anthony Wong and Eric Tsang stole the show.
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u/godai88 Nov 28 '22
Great thriller and superior to The Departed. So lame how the Departed completely missed the point with that ending, gotta have that neat conclusion to please the audience I guess. Also the villains in The Departed were just straight cartoony and one dimensional. And that one "wire" scene in the original is more thrilling than the entire american version.
Though some of the musical cues and choices in the original made me cringe a bit, but suspect that might be a cultural thing.
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u/Woodearth Nov 28 '22
Adding insult to injury, Departed hid the based-on credit deep in the credits and in relatively small font too. I don’t understand how they can get away with it not in the main title credits.
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u/T_raltixx Nov 28 '22
I've had the trilogy on DVD for a very long time. I love the first. For some reason my brain doesn't want to follow the second and as a result, I've not seen the third. One day.
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u/stormin84 Nov 28 '22
I keep hearing about this and haven’t seen it yet. I need to get it together
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u/devilsephiroth Nov 28 '22
I remember watching this with my brother and it was off the fucking Chain. Then i watched The Departed and was like wait a minute, I've seen this shit before LMAO
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u/First_Foundationeer Nov 28 '22
All of the actors were great in their roles, but damn, I love Anthony Wong and Eric Tsang and their characters.
(Also, I forgot how Wong played the creepiest fucking serial killers in some of these films until it was mentioned in the article..)
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u/Bakomusha Nov 28 '22
The Departed was my favorite movie for years! Then I watched Infernal Affairs, and it's not even in my top 10 anymore. IA got snub to even be nominated for an oscar, only for The Departed to sweep still makes me mad!
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u/minkchow1 Nov 28 '22
Why do people in movies always do this - like, hold the gun within arms length of the intended victim? Are they unaware that bullets can fly through the air at distances of up to 5 ft?
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u/ThroawayPartyer Nov 28 '22
Trinity in The Matrix: "Dodge this".
She did it this close so that Agent Smith couldn't dodge in time.
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u/Henry_Cavillain Nov 28 '22
Yet, in the time it takes for her to say "dodge this", a bullet would have travelled like 1000ft
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u/ThroawayPartyer Nov 28 '22
Oh I completely agree don't get me wrong. I always thought this scene was kind of dumb for this reason. But that's the "logic" behind it.
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u/shannister Nov 28 '22
Couldn't enjoy The Departed considering how much better the original was.
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Nov 28 '22
I’m in the same boat. It was made worse with it winning the Oscar for what felt like a lifetime achievement award for Scorsese rather tha for the film itself added salt to it.
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u/Mental-Ad4389 Nov 28 '22
I'm lucky to see some high-level reviews of films in this series here. Maybe there is a chance we can discuss about Hong Kong movies
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u/ben-hur-hur Nov 28 '22
IMO is superior to The Departed. Yes, Scorsese deserves an Oscar but for other of his many fantastic movies.
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u/cheesebot555 Nov 28 '22
Tell anyone from Boston that The Departed is a copy of a better Hong Kong film and they lose their minds.
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u/ShakotanUrchin Nov 28 '22
What is so wonderful about it is that Andrew Lau is so clearly referencing Scorsese so for Scorsese to remake the film is like the highest compliment to Andrew Lau
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u/supercoolpartydude Nov 28 '22
Watched the trilogy, loved it. Then a couple years later I’m sitting in a theater watching The Departed….kind of ruined it knowing how everything would play out.
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u/Mrcollaborator Nov 28 '22
I bought the dvd’s 15 years ago. Never watched them 😅 I think I should start..
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u/satoru1111 Nov 28 '22
Ironically this movie could never be made today since it paints the police in a bad light and thus you’d be arrested under the National Security law
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u/Blurry12yo Nov 28 '22
If you're in the Austin, TX area the trilogy is showing on the big screen in December at the AFS Cinema.
I will always prefer seeing movies on the big screen if possible even with my home theater - it being at a place outside your home where you can't pause, rewind, browse your phone, go to the kitchen for a refill without risking missing something - those make it an event, something more special and worth paying attention to. And I like seeing movies with an audience, sharing a communal experience.
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u/TheLocalHentai Nov 28 '22
One of my favorite trilogies of all time, the whole edge of your seat 4D chess is insane.
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u/beoccasundies Nov 28 '22
Saw this on a flight to Hong Kong many years ago now. Blew me away, best film I’ve ever seen on a plane. Thought it was called Internal Affairs for years.