Firstly, I bloody love the whole Infernal Affairs trilogy. Secondly, Japan needs a good kick-ass police show and the general public's idea of a good police show is Odoru Daisasousen and not Gaiji Keisatsu. Double Face is a very faithful remake of Infernal Affairs. It feels like a shot for shot, dialogue for dialogue remake with some new scenes to make up the 1 1/2 hours running time. Senyuu Sousa is of course the first part of a 2 parter dorama special.
Nishijima Hidetoshi does a pretty good Tony Leung impression. He plays Takayama, the brooding cop stuck in the life of a undercover yakuza, trying to keep his cover and uncover the mole on the other side. Kagawa Teruyuki plays the Andy Lau character Moriya, the yakuza mole. Wakui Emi plays the psychiatrist who the cop goes to see which is like a 100 times better than Kelly Chen, which was the one weak link in Infernal Affairs.
While Senyuu Sousa follows pretty much 3/4 of Infernal Affairs and we do see both characters so it doesn't really feel like the story is told especially from the Tony Leung perspective. It feels like I'm rewatching Infernal Affairs except the characters are speaking Japanese which is a good thing. I bloody hate the Departed because it completely missed the essence of what made Infernal Affairs so good; a cop and a bad guy living the double life and both finding their loyalties torn.
However, the preview for Part 2 Giso Keisatsu shows that Double Face is going to take a radical departure Infernal Affairs where they are removing the token girlfriend and replacing her with Aoi Yu and telling the story from the Andy Lau character perspective, which the third Infernal Affairs movie pretty much was. The undercover triad guy wanting to be the good guy. I'm excited to see how they are going to do it in the framework of the first movie. Hopefully, they won't change or water down the ending.
Double face just looks awesome. They've clearly spend a lot of money on this, hence doing it on two networks. They've even got a did some pretty good car chase sequences in the beginning. One thing missing though is the flashbacks and the iconic moment where Tony Leung and Andy Lau are sitting down listening to Tsai Chin's 'The Forgotten'. I can see why they didn't have the music part cause some things are just magic and can't be replicated but the flashbacks really helped establish the relationship between Tony Leung and Anthony Wong's character.
The Infernal Affairs trilogy is a cinema classic. Nothing can ever top it but Double Face is a great photocopy of it. The interesting part will be part 2 because that's where it can add a lot more character stuff to a story which I rewatch every year. Must watch.
I hate to say this but i preferred so many things about the Japanese remake compared to the original.. and boy it is one heck of a remake. I think basically what the Japanese did was to lose all the cheesiness and cliches that usually comes attached to HK films (no prejudice here, watched them for most part of my childhood) very tastefully and cleverly. I was happy in fact that they got rid of the flashbacks when Superintendent crashed from above because that is cheesy and cliche, while they had already masterfully added some clever dialog in the scene before where Nishijima Hidetoshi joked about asking Superintendent to act as a go-between for his marriage. I'm going to have to apologise to Tony because Nishijima's reaction witnessing Superintendent's sudden death was far more gripping... he did nothing, not even a hand gesture or a tear, and it was all in the eyes. I loved the additional scenes between him and Densha, and i loved the additional scenes between him and Wakui Emi. You are so right about Kelly Chen. Music is top-notch. If TBS X WOWOW collaboration keeps this up there may be hope for Japanese drama in this new era. Can't wait for ep2, Aoi Yu anything should be something!
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