A Better Tomorrow (1986) [Film Review]

A Better Tomorrow; or, Friends will be Friends

     You should quit. Your brother doesn't know what you have been doing. Still remember? You two played cop & thief when you were kids. He almost lost, but he still wanted to be a cop. I don't want you to play the same game again.

My re-discovery of Asian crime drama classics continues, this time with John Woo’s unforgettable A Better Tomorrow, starring Ti Lung, Chow Yun-fat, and Leslie Cheung. A bloody epic about friendship, brotherhood, and moral integrity which paved the way for a whole genre of triad movies.

Release Info

Directed by: John Woo Starring: Ti Lung, Chow Yun-fat, Leslie Cheung

Language: Cantonese Original Title: 英雄本色 Runtime: 95 min

Synopsis

Sun Tse-Ho (Ti Lung) is a trusted triad member who deals with distributing counterfeit dollars. His loyal helper and best friend is Mark (Chow Yun-fat) who is a cool-hand shooter. On the other hand, there is Kit (Leslie Cheung), Ho’s younger brother who joined the police academy and intends to become an officer. Ho supports his brother’s career choice, but does not reveal to him his real line of business. Ho decides that he will make a one more distributing deal in Taiwan and then leave the Triad for good. He travels there with a new guy called Shing (Waise Lee); however, all hell breaks loose and Ho is betrayed. In order to allow Shing to escape he turns himself over to the Taiwanese police. Three years later, Ho gets out of prison and he is determined to start a new life. He comes back to Hong Kong only to find that Kit (now a police inspector) does not want to speak to him and that Mark is a crippled beggar. Shing became the new leader of the Triad and he offers Ho reinstatement in the organisation. Ho refuses, yet he quickly realises that his brother is in danger.

 

True Colours of a Hero

First off, I have to say that this John Woo at his best. I know that I’m just a foreigner who is excited upon seeing a movie that is already a cult classic in Asia, but A Better Tomorrow is so damn good. Undeniably way better than any movie Woo did during his Hollywood years. This film has the story, the stakes, the weight, the action, and the payoff. It is a beautiful, and highly romanticised, ode to male friendship which rises above the label of being just a standard “shoot’em up thriller”.

 

Well, what did I really like about this movie? Two things definitely stand out and these are the following: the screenplay and cinematography. Woo proves that he is a master of his craft with every scene that is so overloaded with aesthetics (see for example the opening sequence or Mark’s memorable restaurant assault) that they could be used for vaporwave MVs. In fact, with some soundtrack changes, A Better Tomorrow would make a great City Pop movie.

 

Even though the movie’s running time is 95 minutes, the story does not run at a rapid pace as we are allowed to get to know the main characters. The conflict of brothers, the cop vs. the thief, is perhaps the most disheartening one as we see Kit determined to prove his worth in the force by taking down the syndicate and Ho trying to live a straight path while being branded as the black sheep by his younger brother. In between them, there’s Mark- suave, almost a chivalric-like (Woo said something along these lines in an interview) avenger, who becomes Ho’s brother by friendship. These kinds of complicated relations and the tragic finale in which Ho struggles not to lose both of his brothers constitute the ultimate onscreen bromance.

 

With regard to performances, all of the main actors are unforgettable in their roles. Waise Lee effortlessly plays the villain, yet he does a much better job with similar material in Bullet in the Head. Emily Chu plays Kit’s girlfriend, Jackie, but her role is quite limited. In addition, even though Ti Lung and Leslie Cheung were very well known at the time of making the movie, Chow Yun-fat was mainly recognisable from his work on television. The portrayal of Mark became a breakthrough performance for him, although he was not the main lead. The success of A Better Tomorrow ensured Chow Yun-fat a continuous cooperation with John Woo (with The Killer (1989), Once a Thief (1991), Hard Boiled (1992)) as well as with other directors in Hong Kong and beyond. Chow Yun-fat gave life to Mark Lee, but it was Mark Lee who launched Chow Yun-fat.

 

Recommendations

If you are new to John Woo, I suggest skipping his Hollywood follies like Hard Target (1993), Face/Off (1997), or M:I-2 (2000) and try to discover the man at his roots. A Better Tomorrow is a great movie (and time) to start with. As I said earlier, it is a wonderful story about brotherhood and plain decency with gunfights and explosions in close foreground. People need more movies like this nowadays, especially when we are flooded with ideologically-driven blockbusters every month. We need modern knights with dark glasses, long coats, and pistols who take a stand in defence of their friends rather than to make a political statement. With A Better Tomorrow, as Ho and Kit are walking together handcuffed, I’m hoping for a real better tomorrow for modern cinema.

Overall score: 10/10