A Better Tomorrow I & II
Welcome to the moment that changed John Woo’s career. Before the “Better Tomorrow” films, Woo was a director of many obscure kung fu action movies; however, with both the 1986 original, and its 1988 sequel, Woo’s career was redefined, and he quickly became the most exciting name in action movies, along with his star, Chow Yun Fat. World cinema hasn’t been the same since.
In all honesty, the story in the first film is hardly groundbreaking. Inspired by American gangster movies, Woo tells a story of cops and robbers as he follows a group of friends through the criminal underworld as a series of events tests loyalties, love, and the resolve of individuals through insurmountable odds. Of course, that describes a lot of John Woo films during this time, whether it’s his classics, “The Killer” and “Hard-Boiled,” or the criminally-underrated “Bullet in the Head.”
What galvanized people about John Woo’s films, however, wasn’t the stories he was telling, but the way he was telling them. Like Martin Scorsese, who had redefined American gangster movies in the 1970s (and who Woo later dedicated “The Killer” to), Woo blended complex, emotional storytelling, focused on that ever-fine line between right and wrong, good and evil, with a balletic, hyper-stylized visual palette that was dramatically different to the straight-forward, almost simple approach Hollywood directors brought to action sequences at the time. In Woo’s hands, the blood-gushing and shootouts had the lyrical expressionism of a Hollywood musical. Super slow motion, blood dancing while in mid-air, and implausible physical feats became the norm in action movies and crime dramas, inspiring everyone from Quentin Tarantino and Michael Bay to Timur Bekmambetov and Guy Ritchie. Love it or hate it, Woo is the most influential man in modern action movies, so if you want to blame anyone for the current state of American movies, blame Woo.
He doesn’t deserve that type of blame, however– he can’t help it if Hollywood only took selected lessons on how to make action movies better. He just wanted to tell entertaining crime stories that focused on “big themes” like friendship, loyalty, morality, and love. True, the stories themselves may not be the deepest when all is said and done, but the characters have deep wells of guilt and tragedy that inspire their choices.
In Chow Yun-Fat, Woo found his greatest surrogate on-screen in exploring such choices. In the first “Better Tomorrow,” Yun-Fat plays a supporting role as Mark, a friend and colleague of Sung Tse-Ho (Ti Lung), a high-ranking member of the Hong Kong Triad whose younger brother, Kit (Leslie Cheung), becomes a cop. Brothers separated by the law was always an important theme for Woo, whether they are the biological family of this film, or spiritually connected like the characters in “Bullet in the Head,” “Hard-Boiled,” or even “Broken Arrow.” After their father is killed because of a deal gone bad, Sung goes to jail, and Kit is more resolved than ever to do right. After a few years inside, Sung is released into a different world, where he finds Mark crippled, and Kit unforgiving of what happened to their father. It isn’t long before the cycle of violence begins again although, ever the romantic, Woo gives us what we want in the end; brothers in blood, and bullets, standing together, until the end.
In “A Better Tomorrow II,” Kit and Sung haven’t deviated far from the paths they took by the end of the first one. Sung is still in prison, having given himself up at the end of the first one, while Kit is still a cop, now working undercover. Both are still involved with the Triad, though this time, finding themselves on the same side of the law to bring down famed counterfeiter Lung (Dean Shek), who was also Sung’s mentor back in the day. After a bad deal in Hong Kong, Lung is sent to New York to hide out, where we come in contact with Ken Lee, a restaurant owner who happens to be the brother of Mark, who died at the end of the first film. It just so happens that their twins, meaning we get to see more of Chow Yun-Fat. How convenient is that?
The post-production process on the second film led to considerable tension between Woo and producer Tsui Hark, resulting in Woo disowning the final product. In all honesty, I can understand his reluctance, as the film lacks the focus and intensity of not just the first movie, but the Hong Kong films that followed for Woo. That said, the film is a wild ride of action and campy melodrama, especially when the movie follows Ken’s exploits in New York. It isn’t as solid as its predecessor, but it still has all of the elements that make John Woo’s films some of the most original, and exciting, in modern times. Well, his Hong Kong films, at least. His American movies are a different story, for another review.
