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154 Allan Cameron and Sean Cubitttime, while Sam (the leader of the crooks) is shot in a multi-level car park.These older characters misread the city, its levels, and its spatial, temporal,and technological codes. They are not as “wired” as Yan and Ming (whomake the most direct use of computers and communication devices); notfast, flexible, or mobile enough. In this respect, Infernal Affairs is in accordwith contemporary Hong Kong’s tendency to narrate its globalized urbanlocation via a stylistic emphasis on speed. These films, argues Esther Yau,“equally anticipate and register the impact of a high-speed race for profitagainst the barriers of time and space” (2001, p. 4). At crucial moments,Sam and Wong’s lack of speed and adaptability is marked by sonic codes:the ting of an elevator and the ring of a cell phone provide death knellsfor Wong and Sam respectively. Not coincidentally, Wong and Sam are alsothe most stable characters, with the least fluid identities: one is clearly acop, the other clearly a crook, representatives of an older order in whichloyalties, identities, and codes of justice were still available (althoughInfernal Affairs II and III go on to complicate this distinction by suggestinga more morally complex past for Wong). At this juncture, the generationalgap evokes Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity (2000), in whichhe argues that the present historical moment is defined by the devaluationof heavy and permanent resources, and a corresponding emphasis uponstreamlining, speed, flexibility, and disposability. Accordingly, identityitself becomes a disposable asset in Infernal Affairs.Infernal Affairs foregrounds the relationship between terminal identityand narrative legibility. The two key women in the story both make use ofcomputers, but not for technological surveillance or detection: Ming’sfiancée, Mary, is writing a novel on her laptop, while Dr Lee, Yan’s romanticinterest, is a psychiatrist who occasionally plays solitaire on her officecomputer. Crucially, their old-fashioned, psychologically derived methodologiescan find no purchase with the elusive Yan and Ming. Mary is workingon a story about a man who has 28 different personalities, but she cannotfigure out whether her main character is good or bad. Similarly, Dr Lee islargely unable to divine Yan’s true nature. Terminal identity escapes theseold-fashioned approaches. The welcoming bed and psychiatrists’ chairassociated with these characters provide a comfortingly domestic homefor the body, but the mind is elsewhere. Apparently, when viewed inrelation to these “feminine” spaces, terminal identity is also an index ofmasculinity.The challenge to the speed and flexibility of the characters in InfernalAffairs is also extended to the audience. Starting with a framing flashbackshowing Yan and Ming as cadets at the police academy, the film sketches