A Better Tomorrow II

Policeman Kit (Leslie Cheung) has gone undercover, romancing the daughter of former gangster Lung (Dean Shek) in order to ascertain if Lung's shipping company is legitimate. Kit's brother Sung Chi Ho (Ti Lung), a criminal protege of Lung's, is released from prison for the same purpose, and discovers that Lung has indeed gone straight. But powerful gangsters want Lung's shipping empire, and frame Lung for the murder of a rival. Chi Ho has Lung smuggled to America for safety, while Lung's daughter stays behind and is killed.

In New York, Lung is attacked by minions of his former partner Ko (Kwan Shan), leader of the gangsters. Lung escapes but innocents are killed, leaving a depressed and nearly catatonic Lung to be cared for by Ken (Chow Yun-Fat, playing the brother of the character, Mark, he played in the previous film). Refusing to pay protection money for his Chinese restaurant, Ken is attacked by mobsters. In the heat of a gunfight, Lung sees Ken injured and snaps out of his catatonia, killing the rival mobsters.

Returning to Hong Kong, Lung and Ken join with Kit and Chi Ho to bring down Lung's former partner, now a powerful counterfeiter. Kit is killed during the investigation, and the remaining three, along with a friend (Kenneth Tsang), assault Ko's house, wiping out scores of gangsters and killing Ko, but suffering mortal injuries in the process.

Hyperbolic doesn't begin to describe it. Woo's usual themes of honor, vengeance, and male bonding are pushed to the extreme, with melodrama and acting so exaggerated they almost seem like self-parody. While his wife is giving birth, Kit abandons her to nobly pursue the investigation; he is consequently fatally injured and has time only to call her in the hospital and name the child ("Ho Yin": the Spirit of Righteousness) before dying. A sappy ballad, sung by popular singing star Cheung, follows. Shek's wildly exaggerated portrayal of Lung as a gibbering idiot isn't so much touching as simply ridiculous, with Chow beaming like a proud parent when Lung suddenly regains his killer instinct and offs the bad guys. In fact, the entire New York sequence (which plays fast and loose with local geography) is pretty dopey, with two separate groups of well-heeled assassins vying to knock off the heroes. But it does produce the film's first major action set-piece, a spectacularly choreographed bloodbath in the halls of a transient hotel. Woo and action director Ching Siu-tung miraculously transform the soggy script into a tense and intense battle, with a signature scene of Chow Yun-Fat sliding on his back down a staircase while emptying a pair of guns into assailants at the top. Yet even that fight doesn't begin to prepare the viewer for the final assault, during which gangsters are killed by handguns, automatic weapons, grenades, bombs, a battle-axe, a samurai sword, anything and everything capable of killing--preferably en masse. The heroes' friend is basically along as armorer, to keep handing them fresh weapons. Blood sprays like rain and bodies fall in mounds, ending with a visual reference to the positively effete-by-comparison TAXI DRIVER (1976).

Ti Lung, the nominal star of Part one, was a former kung fu superstar for the Shaw Brothers studio who had fallen on rough times; in Part II he is, perhaps in homage, the one wielding the sword to chop down his enemies. Ti and Woo had worked together at Shaws, where Woo learned his craft as assistant director under Chang Cheh, a prolific maker of period martial arts films concerned largely with honor, vengeance, and male bonding--with huge dollops of violence and slow-motion ballets of choreographed mayhem. A BETTER TOMORROW was engineered as a comeback for Ti, and for Woo as well, who had followed several martial arts features in the 1970s with a series of successful comedies and found himself typecast as a comedy director, unable to get financing for the kind of thrillers that interested him. A BETTER TOMORROW was based on the popular film THE STORY OF A DISCHARGED PRISONER (1967) by maverick Hong Kong writer-director Lung Kong. (The films share the same Chinese title, "Yingxiong Bense," literally, "The Essence of Heroes.") Woo followed the original plot closely, his major innovation being the addition of a loyal buddy for the hero. Against the wishes of distributors who wanted a more dependable box-office name, he cast as Mark Lee a former TV actor with a string of unsuccessful films to his credit. Chow Yun-Fat became an overnight idol as a result, his wardrobe of long overcoat and sunglasses an instant (and anomalous) fashion trend in steamy Hong Kong. Unfortunately, Mark died in a hail of bullets in the first film, but is figuratively resurrected here as his identical (in every way) brother, who goes so far as to wear Mark's tattered coat for the climax, hanging hand grenades from the bullet holes. A BETTER TOMORROW II milks the idolatry for humor, with Ken's restaurant flunkies dressing in imitation of Ken's slain brother and struggling to act supercool. Chow Yun-Fat rode the tide of success relentlessly, starring in nearly a dozen films each in 1986 and 1987. For A BETTER TOMORROW II he suffered a wrenched back and was singed by an explosion set off by an over-exuberant Woo. (SUPERCOP director Stanley Tong, then still a stuntman, was also put through the ringer by Woo on the film.)

In addition to the returning stars, Woo cast Kwan Shan, a popular leading man in 1960s tragic romances (and father of actress Rosamund Kwan), as villain Ko, and Dean Shek as Lung. Shek had been a character actor in bit roles at Shaws, and played comic foil in countless 1970s kung fu films alongside Jackie Chan and others, before founding Cinema City studios in 1980 with partners Karl Maka and Raymond Wong. Intent on being an artist-run studio rather than one controlled by businessmen, Cinema City became the second biggest Hong Kong film production company of the 1980s (after Golden Harvest, with whom they were related through joint investors). They specialized in comedies and action-comedies before A BETTER TOMORROW redefined the marketplace. It was the first film produced by Woo's longtime friend Tsui Hark, who gave Woo freedom to create a purely personal film. The sequel, made for Tsui's Film Workshop production company and distributed by Cinema City, suffered from clashes between Woo and the notoriously headstong and hands-on Tsui over the focus of the script. Woo eventually turned in a two hour and forty minute version which was instantly deemed too long. Given a week to cut it to under two hours, Woo and Tsui were each given half to edit separately. Woo didn't see the finished product until opening night. He has since essentially disowned the choppy and frequently illogical film, with the exception of the hyper-violent ending. (Graphic violence.) leave a comment