A Better Tomorrow III: Love & Death in Saigon (1989) [Film Review]

A Better Tomorrow III; or, We’ll Always Have Saigon

     When Mun came, he told me over and over that if you find someone whom you truly love, never give them up, even if it means death. He said that you'd never betray me. But now I know what kind of person you are. Even if you aren't my enemy, I never want to see you again as long as I live.

The time has finally come for the review of the explosive A Better Tomorrow trilogy’s final instalment. However, in case of the third movie, John Woo dropped his gun and backed down, and it was Tsui Hark who served as the directorial replacement. In view of such a creative change, is A Better Tomorrow III a worthy conclusion of the bloody tale about brotherhood and friendship in the times of hardship?

Release Info

Directed by: Tsui Hark Starring: Chow Yun-fat, Anita Mui, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Saburo Tokito

Language: Cantonese Original Title: 英雄本色3-夕陽之歌 Runtime: 119 min (BR cut)

 

Synopsis

Vietnam, 1974. Mark Lee (Chow Yun-fat), before he became the living legend, arrives in Saigon with the intention of bringing his cousin Cheung Chi-mun (Tony Leung Ka-fai) and his father (unforgettable Shih Kien) back to Hong Kong before the city will plunge into chaos. The cousins accidentally encounter and help a woman called Chow Ying-kit (Anita Mui) who deals with smuggling and gun trading. She takes Mark and Michael under her wing and eventually helps them escape from Saigon. Nevertheless, Mun falls for Kit, but she becomes infatuated with Mark who does not want to get involved. When she joins them in Hong Kong, the romantic drama ensues. However, Kit’s true lover and mentor, Tanaka (Saburo Tokito), returns and forcefully takes her back to Saigon. Mark returns to Vietnam in order to save the love of his life.

 

Song of the Setting Sun

Even though being a prequel to the original movie, A Better Tomorrow III turns out to be much better than the second part of the trilogy. Most importantly, the screenplay does not go bizarre, but tries to play things safe in the long run. There is the purpose (getting out of Vietnam), well fleshed-out characters, shootouts, and explosions. In fact, I dare to think that in many ways, Love & Death in Saigon could work as an independent movie.

 

However, if you expected Chow Yun-fat to carry the weight of this prequel on his firm shoulders, then you are gravely mistaken. There are two words which make this movie work: Anita Mui. Portraying a character quite different from her other famous roles (see Rouge (1988)), Anita proves in ABT III that she can play a tough and independent woman who can handle herself in every situation. The scene where she guns down hordes of charging Vietcong soldiers is an excellent example of her onscreen awesomeness.

 

While her character perpetuates the first and second acts of the picture, only the finale is handed over to Chow Yun-fat as he grabs the machine gun and goes on a killing spree. Even though it is Mark Lee’s origin story, the movie does not seem to focus on him as the central character. Obviously, all of the main events revolve around Mark: we get to see how he is given glasses and a coat, but he feels as if cast aside for the purpose of building up this whole world of rotten smugglers in the times of war. Nevertheless, I do not regard this as the film’s disadvantage, but if you expect a similar tone as in ABT I and II, you may feel a bit disappointed.

 

What the movie suffers from is the noticeable lack of Ti Lung, but Tony Leung Ka-fai serves as a decent replacement. Mark and Mun have a good chemistry together and it really seems that they got through more than one action in their lives. However, the most gripping subplot is the one about Mun’s father, which could serve as the basis for a whole separate movie. Namely, Mun’s father took in to his house Pat (Cheng Wai-lun), a Vietnamese kid who lost his parents. Although they can’t communicate in one language, Mun’s father treats Pat like a son and, when he is due to depart together with Mark and Mun, his farewell to Pat creates a strong emotional scene. As a result, we get a very impactful foster parent/foster child stuff that the previous A Better Tomorrows did not even touch upon.

 

Saburo Tokito (at the beginning of his career) also provides a worthy addition to the film as the main villain. However, his role of Tanaka is quite limited so he does not manage to achieve the bad-to-the-bone rank of Waise Lee from the first movie. However, it is cool that at least his character was given a back story (a Japanese pretending to be Chinese in order to survive WWII), which makes his confrontation with Mark in the finale much more interesting. In addition, I have to mention there exists a full, uncut, Taiwanese version of the film that runs 145 minutes long, but it is quite difficult to track down.

Recommendations

While it moves away from the style set by the antecedent movies, A Better Tomorrow III is bold due to its strong characters and exotic setting, which provides opportunities for a tragic love story, slow-motion showdowns, and exploding tanks. Yet, it does not quite fulfil the premise of telling us “how Mark became Mark” and does not even live up to the status of a bloody adventure epic like, for example, John Woo’s Bullet in the Head from 1990. In other words, A Better Tomorrow III is a good prequel and I will definitely revisit it more often than ABT II, but the real A Better Tomorrow can be only one.

Overall score: 7/10