Imitation or Rip-Off
Everyone knows China has a huge industry surrounding pirated movies. It’s a fact and really something to be concerned with. We all know Hollywood is freaking out about it.
But truth be told I think they are so concerned because then the Chinese people will finally realize that Hollywood has been stealing all their movie ideas and rise up as an angry mob and crush them under a sea of Kung Fu fists and feet.
Take the amazing movie The Departed.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407887/
Great movie and powerful performances but it’s a complete and utter rip off of a movie that came out four years earlier called: Internal Affairs (USA Title. Mou gaan dou Hong Kong title.*)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338564/
They ripped this movie off so badly it’s really difficult to see how they got away with it and how they weren’t sued into non-existence for plagiarism and theft of intellectual property.
Here’s how bad it was: (spoiler alert)
Remember the scene with the stand off at the end where they were coming down the elevator in The Departed and the undercover cop was going to take the mole into custody and when the doors open up the undercover cop gets shot in the head by another mole cop sent to protect the original mole and the elevator doors continually close and open on his legs? And then the mole in the police force (who’s really bad) shoots the other mole cop in the head and makes it look like they shot each other? Well that scene is played out exactly expect for one part - they aren’t in the elevator. They are outside an elevator and when the doors open the undercover cop gets shot and the doors continually close on his legs.
That’s the difference. The blocking was the same except the director said,
“I know this translated Chinese script says inside the elevator but just to switch it up a little, we’ll do everything the same only we’ll do it” …wait for it…. “outside the elevator.”
Then the director is praised as a genius of creative cinema as some lowly director wanna-be intern gives him a massage with a happy ending while they move the camera to the opposite side of the room.
There are so many other parts that steal directly from this movie I just don’t have the time or energy to rant on them all.
Just know that as much as I enjoyed The Departed after seeing Internal Affairs it is now a cheap imitation of a fantastic and gripping foreign film. I highly recommend renting it. It was better acted and directed then The Departed and I was reading the subtitles while watching it and it still was more enjoyable.
*(Ok. So I know Hong Kong isn’t exactly China but since the British left and the entire island is filled with Chinese descendants, and it’s now under Chinese rule again, and because I needed a country with enough people to rise up in angry mob fashion that would elicit the appropriate imagery - they are China. Done.)