Leofwine_draca A BETTER TOMORROW sees director John Woo single-handedly inventing the 'heroic bloodshed' genre that was to flourish in Hong Kong for the following decade. It's a tough, atmospheric and ultra-stylish story of gangsters and betrayal, of brotherhood and pain, and it's also not quite up there with his famous later efforts.Okay, call me spoilt; I think HARD-BOILED and THE KILLER are the two greatest Woo/Yun-Fat collaborations out there, and A BETTER TOMORROW is slightly weak in comparison to those movies. For starters, it's not an action film like those two; there are a few amazing scenes, but that's all you're going to get. Instead, there's a fair bit of overwrought melodrama instead, familiar for anyone acquainted with Hong Kong cinema. The beginning is quite slow, although you get drawn into the story before long and once it has you, it has you.The film is widely advertised as being a Chow Yun-Fat movie, but the actor plays only in support, although it's a great role that tests the limits of his acting. The real lead is the great former Shaw Brothers star Ti Lung, excellent as always and finding a new lease of cinematic life here. Leslie Cheung completes the trio as the upstanding cop. Avoid the terrible quality British DVD of this movie, which spoiled my enjoyment of it the first time I saw it; the Hong Kong import is the way to go.

TransAtlantyk This is the movie that made John Woo the reputation that he has for action films. If you enjoy action films, and in particular other Hong Kong action films then you will enjoy this. Stylistically it is easily identified as a Woo film and doesn't really transcend the action film genre but it does work marvelously within the confines of that genre.Some consider The Killer or Hard-Boiled to be the better John Woo HK film but I find that while the Killer and Hard-Boiled both have tighter, more elegant action sequences what really makes A Better Tomorrow lead the pack is the plot. It isn't an entirely original plot but it is well acted enough that you really feel for the characters and can understand the motivations. It isn't a typical action movie plot where the script serves simply as a device to create interesting action sequences. You get traditional Chinese themes such as honor, loyalty, and strong family ties.As always Chow Yun Fat is a pleasure to watch. He is simply one of the coolest action stars in the entire global movie industry. You could search far and wide and not find a more suave action star than the dual-pistol wielding, cigarette-in-mouth Chow Yun Fat. Worth watching for his presence alone. If you only know him from the American films he has done then you are doing yourself a disservice.In summation: if you like action films you will love A Better Tomorrow. It's that simple. Also check out other Woo HK films like The Killer and Hard Boiled.

oneguyrambling John Woo was making films for a full 20 years before he decided on a plot device that he has revisited again and again over the more successful phase of his career as an "action first / plot second" writer-director.That wrinkle was to have a good guy and a bad guy exist alongside one another, and indeed even team up at times, so that the audience could see that they might not really be that different, and to lead to several stand-offs and situations where they are in close proximity.The first notable time that occurred was in this film made in 1986, but of course Woo went back to the well with The Killer, Hardboiled and Face/Off, among others.This film also showed that Chow Yun Fat is a cool cat regardless whether he is playing a good or a bad guy. (His presence alone made me watch Bulletproof Monk not once, but TWICE.) In A Better Tomorrow, Yun-Fat is Mark, a small time gangster of little significance who piggybacks the success of Ho Sung, both are intimately involved in an operation counterfeiting US currency.(Mark is cool because he wears sunnies inside and he always has a toothpick hanging out the side of his mouth, even while he is smoking.) Ho Sung's little bro Kit is graduating from the Police Training Academy and entering the force, and their Dad's dying wish is that Ho Sung go straight and not allow Kit to find out what a bad guy he really is.Ho-Sung agrees, after one last job… Of course the "one last job" goes bad, and Ho Sung ends up in prison after his young new protégé Shing sells him out to the cops. After finding out that Ho is in da' joint Mark puts a hit on the bad guys, and is he himself shot in the leg. ( I might add here that even if it wasn't the first time he did it, Woo was already a fan of allowing his characters to shoot 77 rounds from a pistol without reloading.) Fast forward 3 years >>>>> Ho is out of prison and Kit is now a senior cop. Having copped a little grief from his peers and superiors at having a crim for a brother Kit wants nothing to do with Ho, who only wants to prove that he is true to his word and is in fact going straight.Ho gets a job and does go straight, and when he comes across Mark he is saddened that he is now nothing more than a limping dogsbody for his new gang-boss Shing, the very guy who sold Ho out just 3 years prior.That is a lot of stuff, apparently 3 years is a very long time in Hong Kong.From this point the film becomes a tug of war: Ho wants nothing more than to show Kit he's a good boy now, Shing wants Ho back in the business, as does Mark who will not be allowed in without him, and Kit just wants to bust the whole lot of them to prove he is a supercop with no family bias.Given all that, it's hard to see this ending happily.The usual Woo signature flashes are present, the slo-mo violence, the generous and effective use of blood-packs and squibs to show the spurts created by some of the 77 rounds fired from each magazine, and in the Big Shootout at the end of the film Mark gets to use two pistols at once, something that he then did in every film he ended up doing with Woo.A Better Tomorrow doesn't hold up well unfortunately despite being seen as a genre-setting film at the time, and being namechecked by everyone and his Tarantino as being influential. It is momentously cheesy at times (see below), has some obviously clumsy direction as Woo worked on his chops and just a terrible soundtrack, somehow though it manages to be a passable flick if nothing better is available. The problem is that nowadays there should always be something better available, namely almost everything that Woo did after this, for example.Final Rating – 6 / 10. A Better Tomorrow showed signs of what was to come without ever making me Woo-zy, and it never really reaches any heights.If you liked this review (or even if you didn't) check out oneguyrambling.com

Deniz Ziya Toroslu Unfortunately John Woo has never done another Hard Boiled. A Better Tomorrow was a big disappointment for me, because I had expected a real stylish action packed film but it was not. The director is John Woo, it has Chow Yun Fat and the hype says it is action, but the movie was too slow paced again (like The Killer) and the action scenes (if it has any real one!) were not that great or unforgettable like the master's some other movies. The attack to the restaurant scene and the final part were remarkable, but that's all. The restaurant scene was pretty stylish, John Woo style, but it was too short. What about the high rating then? Well, I don't know. Unfortunately, the problem is not only lack of action, also the movie was not stylish as I had expected, the cinematography was just OK and I am sorry to say that, but it was not neither a first class film, nor an entertaining B movie. It was like a third class TV movie. Some people say that A Better Tomorrow and The Killer are John Woo's best movies and they are also "art". Simply, I disagree with that opinion. However, I am still hopeful that John Woo will be back one day and make movies like Hard Boiled.