After the smash box office
success of A Better Tomorrow (1986)
in its native country of Hong Kong and other Asian territories, the film’s
producer Tsui Hark convinced its director John Woo to quickly crank out a
sequel imaginatively titled A Better Tomorrow II (1987). The two men had a contentious relationship during
production and this spilled over during the editing phase where they argued
over the length of the film. It got so bad that a mediator had to step in,
allowing Hark and Woo to each edit a half of the film. The end result is a
flawed yet fascinating mess of a film that divided Woo fans but helped
popularize what became known as the Heroic bloodshed movie, a genre of Hong
Kong cinema distinctive for its overtly stylized action sequences often
involving excessive gunplay and melodramatic themes consisting of brotherhood,
honor, duty, and ultimately redemption.
A few years have passed
since the events depicted in A Better
Tomorrow. Sung Tse Ho (Ti Lung) is recruited from prison to infiltrate and
bust an international counterfeiting operation in Hong Kong. His target is Lung
Si (Dean Shek), his former mentor. He’s asked to go undercover and investigate
Lung but Ho refuses out of loyalty and the belief that his friend has retired
from the business. So, his younger brother Sung Tse Kit (Leslie Cheung), now a
police lieutenant, takes the job instead. He manages to impress Lung by helping
his daughter in a dance contest.
When Kit’s wife Jackie
(Emily Chu) visits Ho in prison upset and worried about her husband’s “secret
mission,” he reconsiders the deal offered him. Ho is quickly reunited with Lung
and finds out his mentor really has gone straight despite crippling debts and
pressure from rival mob boss Mr. Wong (Ng Man-tat) to buy Lung’s shipyard.
However, at a meeting with Mr. Wong, Lung is framed for the crime boss’ murder
and so Ho puts his mentor on a boat to New York City. However, Lung’s beautiful
young daughter is killed on orders from crime boss Ko Ying Pui (Shan Kwan),
which, coupled with seeing the kindly priest that took him in and a little girl
get killed by assassins, drives him off the deep end. Just how much more trauma
can this guy take?
Before he’s about to be
given electroshock therapy at a mental institution Lung is sprung by Ken “Gor”
Lee (Chow Yun-fat), the twin brother of Mark who was killed in A Better Tomorrow. It takes
approximately 20 minutes before we’re introduced to Ken in a ridiculously drawn
out scene where he rants about a plate of rice that a customer doesn’t like. It
is a shameless bit of overacting even by Hong Kong cinema standards and I
suppose is intended to show that Ken is just as wild and unpredictable as his
brother. However, the scene goes on and on into self-parody and one has to give
Chow Yun-fat credit for fully committing – or something like that. The
overacting continues as Ken tries to get Lung out of his catatonic state. Of
course, just as Ken makes a breakthrough they are attacked by assassins. Only
in a Woo film would a bloody shoot-out snap a character out of his catatonia.
Having survived yet another attack, Ken and Lung go back home to Hong Kong,
team up with Ho and Kit and exact unholy vengeance on Ko and his army of crooks
in what proves to be one incredible action set piece after another.
In keeping with the
tradition of Heroic bloodshed movies, A
Better Tomorrow II is essentially a soap opera for guys, albeit a
bullet-ridden one. It features incredibly heightened emotions (see the rice
scene) as the main characters constantly make life or death decisions. Their
lives are continually in danger, which creates an intense bond – the hallmark
of many Woo films, especially his Hong Kong ones. Around the one-hour mark the
slow motion mayhem really kicks into gear as the Chow Yun-fat action hero we
all know and love manifests itself when a gang of bad guys tries to kill Ken
and Lung at a flophouse they’re hiding out in. Among the beautifully
orchestrated carnage we get a breathtaking shot of Ken sliding down a flight of
stairs while dispatching an anonymous baddie with two guns – an iconic image
that perhaps best encapsulates what the Heroic bloodshed genre is all about.
This stunt was also a warm-up for a similar one that would be pulled off in Hard Boiled (1992), Woo’s Hong Kong swan
song.
The rice rant aside, Chow
Yun-fat demonstrates why he was such a super star in Hong Kong. He gives off an
air of effortless cool as the unstoppable action hero and Woo’s cinematic alter
ego. He has loads of charisma and the camera really picks up on it in a big
way. Ti Lung is also quite good as the conflicted ex-con that risks his life by
going undercover to protect his brother. Leslie Cheung plays the tragic cop
with everything to lose. His character has a pregnant wife yet constantly risks
his life in order to take down Ko. Finally, Dean Shek is excellent as the
father figure of the group and shows considerable chops as Lung goes from
honest businessman to catatonic victim to ruthless avenger.
After the financial success
of A Better Tomorrow, the film’s
producer Tsui Hark wanted to capitalize on it by quickly making a sequel.
Originally, the film’s director John Woo agreed but only if it was a prequel
set in Vietnam. To him, it didn’t make sense to make a sequel because Mark, A Better Tomorrow’s most popular
character was dead. Woo came up with a story that depicted how the main
characters in the first film became friends and got to where they were in life.
This was ultimately rejected and he later used it in one of his most personal
films Bullet in the Head (1990).
One of Woo’s good friends,
actor Dean Shek was going through a rough patch in his career. He was no long
popular with audiences and had gone to the United States with the intention of
retiring. So, Hark and Woo met with Shek in America and convinced him to come
back and make another film with them. This inspired Hark to come up with an
idea for a sequel with Shek’s character Lung being coaxed back into action by
his friends. Hark also came up with the idea of Mark’s twin brother Ken living
in New York City. Woo wasn’t thrilled with these ideas because it ended any
notion of his prequel idea but he wanted to help out Shek.
Problems arose during
production when Woo came up with the idea of shifting the focus of the film to
the two younger brothers – Ken and Kit – because he felt that they had a lot in
common. The director shot several scenes with them working and talking
together. However, when the film’s original cut ran almost three hours, Hark
felt that the film was too long and that the focus should be on Lung. He wanted
all of these additional scenes removed. Woo refused to make these cuts and so
Hark secretly made edits only for Woo to then put the footage back in
afterwards. A mediator stepped in and gave Hark and Woo one week to each edit a
half of the film. The end result is a version of the film that neither men were
happy with, especially Woo who considers it his least favorite of anything he’s
done (Really? Has he seen Paycheck?).
Like many Woo films, A Better Tomorrow II examines themes of
honor and loyalty. Ho goes to great extremes in protecting his mentor and his
brother Kit as well. These guys are willing to face insurmountable odds and die
for each other all in the name of friendship. But it is more than just
friendship. When you’ve come so close to death as these guys have there is an
unbreakable bond that connects them in a way that clearly fascinates Woo as he
has explored it so many times in his films.
Sure, he lays the angst and
melodrama on thick but in doing so raises the stakes in the action sequences.
This was a pretty novel notion at the time. It makes the climactic showdown –
where Ken, Lung and Ho are decked out in black suits (anticipating Reservoir Dogs by a few years) – that
much more memorable because these guys have sacrificed so much that they’re due
for some well-deserved payback and man, do they ever dish it out by staging a
full-on assault on Ko’s compound with automatic weapons, grenades and, in one
memorable bit, a samurai sword. But it is Woo’s trademark dual handgun action
that is used the most and to greatest effect. A Better Tomorrow II takes the first film and ups the ante with
more bloodshed and more melodrama for an installment that some prefer over the
original. For a film that had such a troubled production, it is surprisingly
coherent and in terms of its action sequences a classic of the genre. Woo would
improve greatly on this template with The
Killer (1989) and the aforementioned Hard
Boiled before trying his luck in Hollywood with mixed results.
