The first film in the Infernal Affairs triptych introduced the two warring factions at the centre of this crime epic, with the triads and the police force struggling for control of Hong Kong. Smart, complex storytelling played out against the shiny metal and neon backdrop of the city at night. A tale of good guys fighting their darker nature, and bad guys fighting for redemption. A dizzying number of crosses, double-crosses and triple-crosses. It was a satisfying cops and robbers tale that put Michael Mann’s Heat to shame, and paid homage at the shrine of Coppola’s Godfather trilogy.

This second instalment rewinds back to 1991, and the moment when our two protagonists committed themselves to living a lie in the pocket of their enemies. “Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer” is the mantra they live their lives by.

The problem with prequels (as George Lucas seems to have discovered) is that your audience already knows who lives, who dies, and what happens next. Infernal Affairs II neatly dodges this narrative dead-end by shifting the focus away from the two young anti-heroes at the heart of Part One, and places the spotlight firmly onto the father figures who hurl them into their lives of duplicity. The film manages to surprise within minutes after the opening titles fade, by revealing that Police Inspector Wong (Anthony Wong) and crime boss Sam (Eric Tsang) were once close friends, respecting the boundaries of the worlds each other live in, and we get to sit back and watch the friendship disintegrate, resulting in a film which actually betters its predecessor.

On the down side, this film suffers from the same flaw as the first film, a victim of its own convoluted multi-character plot threads, and it becomes easy to confuse characters, their motivations and their role in the story. Attentive viewing is not only rewarded, but is required.

Francis Ng is a cracking addition to the Infernal Affairs mythology, as the calm and ruthless gangland boss Hau, with the outwardly respectable veneer of an accountant, betrayed only by the cold, dead eyes of Michael Corleone.

As alliances crumble and the dust of battle settles, the action plays out against the backdrop of Hong Kong’s handover to Beijing in 1997, in a nifty and understated metaphor for the forced transition and irreversible change of the characters.

A stunning middle chapter in this series of future classics. Martin Scorsese has a hell of a task in front of him to replicate the sheer style and flair of the series with the planned Hollywood remake.

I’ll stick with the originals. Part Three can’t come soon enough.