With Tony Leung and Andy Lau recently reuniting for the new feature Goldfinger, it’s only fitting that restorations of the iconic Hong Kong stars’ crime trilogy Infernal Affairs would arrive this fall. Directed by Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak, all three films will be given a theatrical run starting at Film at Lincoln Center on September 16, followed by a release from the Criterion Collection, and now the new trailer has arrived.
The digital transfers were created in 4K resolution on an ARRISCAN film scanner from the original camera negative. The original stereo soundtracks were remastered from the digital audio master files. See the official synopsis (of course echoed in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed) below.
The Hong Kong crime drama was jolted to new life with the release of the Infernal Affairs trilogy, a bracing, explosively stylish critical and commercial triumph that introduced a dazzling level of narrative and thematic complexity to the genre with its gripping saga of two rival moles—played by superstars Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau Tak-wah—who navigate slippery moral choices as they move between the intersecting territories of Hong Kong’s police force and its criminal underworld. Set during the uncertainty of the city-state’s handover from Britain to China and steeped in Buddhist philosophy, these ingeniously crafted tales of self-deception and betrayal mirror Hong Kong’s own fractured identity and the psychic schisms of life in a postcolonial purgatory.
See the trailer and poster below.
The new restorations of the Infernal Affairs trilogy open on September 16 at NYC’s Film at Lincoln Center and will expand.