Infernal Affairs III

Director: Andrew Lau, Alan Mak, Andrew Lau, Alan Mak, Andrew Lau, Alan Mak

2003 / 118min / DCP

Tong Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau Tak-wah return for the final entry in Lau and Mak’s trilogy which, via nimble flashbacks and other sleights of cinema, shows us events before and after those of the original, as Lau’s corrupt cop, haunted by the memory of his dead opposite number Leung, scrambles to keep his subterfuge a secret while butting heads with Leon Lai, a new, very able antagonist within the HKPD. Its ingeniously intertwined storylines pack in all the double-crosses and skullduggery that made its predecessors such crowd-pleasers, along with a heightened, almost hallucinatory confusion of morality and motives that makes for a fitting capstone to this grand cycle of betrayal and cognitive disarray.