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
