On Friday, I finally watched The Departed, Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning remake of Infernal Affairs, the edge-of-your-seat Hong Kong crime thriller made in 2002.
The story is basically the same in both movies. A powerful mob boss succeeds in planting a mole the police force. Meanwhile, an undercover cop manages to infiltrate the mob. The loyalty of each is tested as the two factions fight. When both sides suspect a mole in their respective organizations, it becomes a race to discover their identities.
Beyond the basic premise, the films are quite different. I thought it would be fun to do a side-by-side comparison and award an Edge to the films in each category
| Category | The Departed (TD) | Infernal Affairs (IA) | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Title | The Departed | Infernal Affairs | TD - Solely on the fact that I've heard so many people call IA Internal Affairs. But maybe I'm being too critical. Play on words can be confusing and F and T sound so alike. I mean, look at the big films out right now - Surt's Up, Ocean's Fhirfeen, Tanfasfic Tour. See? An easy mistake anyone could make. |
| Mob Boss | Jack Nicholson | Eric Tsang | TD - By a hair (have you seen Nicholson's hair?). For one-time-viewing, nothing beats Jack being Jack. He's creepy, loud, and over-the-top, and since I hadn't seen him in anything recently, he seemed fresh and amusing. But if I were given a choice to watch his or Tsang's performance again, I would take Tsang without hesitation. |
| Captain/Superintendent | Martin Sheen | Anthony Wong | IA - In both films, the character was a mentor/father to the undercover cop, but in IA, he was a mentor/father to both of the main characters, which added an element of closeness and loyalty that was missing in TD. |
| Police Mole | Matt Damon | Andy Lau | IA - In TD, Damon's character seemed more isolated from the action and Damon came across as creepy rather than calculating. In IA, the same character seemed more involved and invested in what transpired between the two sides, so when he faced the ultimate question of loyalty and identity, it felt more climatic and the resolution more satisfying. |
| Undercover Cop | Leonardo DiCaprio | Tony Leung | Tie - DiCaprio was the best thing about TD. You can see and feel his internal (not infernal) struggle with his identity. He's a cop who is told he'll never be a cop by those above him. He comes from a long line of criminals and is thrust back into that criminal world, left to survive on his own. Leung did an equally incredible job of portraying the conflicted and troubled cop in IA. |
| Women | Vera Farmiga | Kelly Chen and Sammi Cheng | IA - While merging the original female characters into a single woman added a source of tension between the two main characters, it did so at the expense of the story's pacing. |
| Length | 151 min. | 101 min. | IA - TD covers the same amount of ground as IA, but takes nearly an hour more to do so. TD could have been stronger if it had been shorter. |
| Location | Boston | Hong Kong | IA - While I love Boston, its skyscrapers can't compete with the ones in Hong Kong and IA took full advantage of the HK skyline. The elevation added to the tension, especially in the final confrontation between Lau and Leung at the summit of an urban mountain. |
| Stealth Communication | Text Messages | Morse Code | IA - While both seem like highly unbelievable forms of undetectable communication in tight quarters, Morse code seems slightly more plausible than text messages for some reason. Everybody in TD was able to send perfectly spelled text messages from phones hidden in their jacket pockets without looking or being discovered. Plus, every guy in TD, including Martin Sheen, had the unnaturally nimble text messaging thumb of a teenaged girl. That's just wrong. |
| Miscellaneous Cops | Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg | N/A | TD - By a Wahlberg. Both of these characters were splintered from Wong's original Superintendent. Baldwin did a nice job, but Wahlberg stole every scene he was in. His Sgt. Dignam was crass and cynical, yet utterly likable. |
| Director | Martin Scorsese | Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak | TD - Scorsese wins by sheer reputation and name recognition alone. He did a great job with the material he had. |
Final Tally: TD - 4.5, IA - 6.5.
Both were good movies, but I enjoyed IA more. If you liked The Departed, but haven't seen the original, I would highly recommend watching Infernal Affairs.
2 Comments
Well, I loved Infernal Affairs much more than The departed!
Did you know there is Part 2? On how tony Leung and andy lau came to join the triad and police respectively? And Part 3... it was not that good though. Just trying to ride the waves of success.
I understood it was part of a trilogy. The second one sounds like a prequel that might be worth watching, but the third one sounds like an afterthought to cash in on the prior two. I might just skip that one and find another good Tony Leung film.