E-Mail This Article to a Friend INFERNAL AFFAIRS

Earlier this year, the sometimes clueless folks at Miramax dusted off Zhang Yimou’s 2002 Hong Kong effort, Hero, hoping to eke a few late-summer dollars out of a perceived marketing challenge. To their surprise, it opened atop the box-office charts. Capitalizing on this new-found audience, in late September, Miramax released Infernal Affairs (starring Hero’s Tony Leung), another imported 2002 gem, this one from Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, and credited with propelling the recently resurgent Hong Kong cinema — but in only two cities. Some lessons are never learned.

Now, the Brattle Theatre is offering a week-long stay of execution to this taut cat-and-mouse thriller. Eschewing the hyper-stylized violence popularized by John Woo, Infernal Affairs twists the labyrinthine tale of Ming (Andy Lau) and Yan (Hero’s Tony Leung), two moles on opposing sides of the law whose fates are intertwined. Building to a darkly ironic conclusion antithetical to anything Hollywood would produce (though I’m hoping the planned Boston-set remake helmed by Martin Scorsese and starring Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio will prove me wrong), Infernal Affairs vividly illustrates the Buddhist concept of "continuous hell." For the next week, sagacious viewers will be treated to anything but. (100 minutes)