A buddy-gangster film, about two best long-time friends, Sung Tse-Ho, (Ti Lung, BRAVE ARCHER, CITY WAR) and Mark Lee (Chow Yun-Fat, do I really have to name a couple of his films for context, here???) who are counterfeiters for the Triad. The personal wrinkle and complication being, Ho's little brother Kit (Leslie Cheung, DAYS OF BEING WILD, THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR) is a straight-and-narrow type, training to be a cop, completely unaware of his older brothers ties to crime.
After a tragedy involving Ho and Kit's father, and a home invasion by gang members, Ho winds up in prison for three years.
A BETTER TOMORROW jumps ahead, and follows Ho as he tries to walk the line, make amends for his violent past, and hopefully earn his brothers forgiveness, who is now an officer on the force.
Ho's old friends in the mob have other plans for him though, unwilling to let such a talented counterfeiter simply retire and live a mundane life. Soon he is also reunited with Mark, now poverty stricken and destitute, and drawn back into the chaos and violence of their bloody ex-careers.
John Woo's A BETTER TOMORROW is respected as one of the originators and high bar examples of "Heroic Bloodshed" films. Brotherhood, honor, duty, personal code, bravery, wrapped up in a propensity for violence, a mind-set where vengeance is a virtue. While I absolutely respect it's place and importance in the pantheon of the sub-genre, there is a goofiness to it at times, names from Leslie Cheung's performance, sorrynotsorry, that for me, undermined the flow, and often the intensity. There are, of course, some great operatic scenes of gun violence, be it an Uzi spraying down a legion of incredibly well dressed gang members, or two sweaty dudes, two guns, and one toothpick, and that is obviously the primary focus and purpose of A BETTER TOMORROW. To be a balls out action film. And when it is, it is. But I can see where there was definitely room for improvement as far as Woo and his sense of pacing, character, and nailing the underpinnings that make action important in the first place, in his later work. Gladly, he definitely achieved it.
7/10
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