Directed by John Woo. Written by Hing-Ka Chan, Suk-Wah Leung, and John Woo
There are some things you know will be iconic the moment you lay eyes on them. It’s an uncanny experience, watching them jump into the cultural conversation with little attention to what was said before, completely uninterested because it didn’t revolve around them.
Watching Chow Yun-Fat in a long overcoat with black-out shades burn a fake $100 bill to light his cigarette is that kind of indelible moment, and it casts its light over all of John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow, the story of an underworld high roller who tries to go straight and reconcile with his police officer brother, but finding it exceedingly hard to do so.
Lung Ti stars as Sung Tse-ho, the high roller in question. He and Mark (Chow Yun Fat) have been in the game a long time and the game has been good to them. Despite the stakes and serious risks involved in selling forged currency, they’re giddy like degenerate gamblers playing with house money.
Things are more serious at home, however: Tse-ho’s father is ailing, and he wishes for his son to quit his life of crime before his younger brother Sung Tse-kit (Leslie Cheung) catches wind of it. Tse-kit idolizes his older brother, and idolizes the badge. He wants to be a cop like the sun wants to rise in the east. Tse-ho just has one final job to do and then he’s out for good…
A Better Tomorrow is John Woo right on the precipice of perfecting his signature style. Its action scenes see a downpour of bullets and splatterings of blood, all caught in slow motion for us to better appreciate the carnage but also to suggest how these moments brand themselves in the lives and memories of those caught in them.
Saying this is a John Woo film is likely enough for anyone familiar with his work to have a perfect idea of what they’re in for should they choose to watch A Better Tomorrow. Big emotions, big set pieces, even bigger spectacle. What’s missing are just the pet visual flourishes that in time will feel more like quick hits of dopamine reserved for the fans who can spot these little easter eggs and go ah, there it is.
What A Better Tomorrow does have is a greater emotional intensity than some of his standout classics and an interesting relationship to violence and suffering as signifiers of penance. This is an emotional movie for men with dramatic emotions. The tension between Tse-ho and Mark is so thick it’d stop a sharp knife, and the frustrated feelings shared by Tse-ho and Tse-kit likewise roil.
The only release for all three men is bloodshed, being hurt or hurting others, and the willingness to commit great violence or suffer it the only way they know how to express their affection for one another.
The emotional turbulence of these men is writ large, and so any catharsis likewise requires grand gestures. A Better Tomorrow is a heady dollop of schmaltz as a consequence, akin to manly men laid low by the common cold and turning existential in those two days of mid-level woe.
This is all perfectly in line with a movie that would autocorrect “subtle” to “submachine gun”. With A Better Tomorrow, Woo tells you more is indeed more, and he’ll wink at you the entire time he piles it on. The experience is exemplary, but with what’s to come from Woo, you’ve also seen nothing yet.
Mikkel Frederiksen 