Bait and Switch Martin Scorsese, hero of the Hong Kong New Wave, returns the compliment

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(Free-Press-Release.com) October 20, 2006 -- No studio director was a greater hero to the Hong Kong new wave than Martin Scorsese. John Woo dedicated The Killer to him; Wong Kar-wai modeled his first feature, As Tears Go By, after Mean Streets; Taxi Driver's rain-slicked slo-mo urban stylistics worked their way into countless lesser HK films. With The Departed, Scorsese returns the compliment striving to bring it all back home by remaking the strongest Asian action film of the past few years.

Andrew Lau and Andy Mak's 2002 Infernal Affairs has a scenario so excellent it's amazing it didn't appear until movies entered their second century (and readers are invited to let me know if it had): A powerful mob boss grooms a follower from childhood to join the police even as the police plant an undercover agent within the boss's crime family. Each organization realizes that it has been infiltrated, but it's not until the movie approaches its climax and after each mole has been enjoined to, in effect, find himself that the deeply buried parallel informants figure out each other's identity.

Its key dramatic roles assumed mainly by cell phones, Infernal Affairs is one of those rare movies in which the premise is the star; Scorsese, however, has necessarily packed his remake with names. Matt Damon plays the rogue cop (Andy Lau's role in the original), with Leonardo DiCaprio as his undercover counterpart (embodied with soulful vulnerability by Tony Leung). Towering over both youngsters, Jack Nicholson has the meaty and here vastly inflated hole of the patriarchal crime boss. Eric Tsang stole Infernal Affairs with his high-spirited moonfaced malevolence; Nicholson is handed the keys to the kingdom in his first scene.

Source: http://www.yahoo.com

andrew lau     hong kong     infernal affairs     martin scorsese     Matt Damon     studio director