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A Better Tomorrow
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Wikipedia article
'A Better Tomorrow' is a 1986 Hong Kong action film directed by John Woo and starring Ti Lung, Leslie Cheung and Chow Yun-fat. The film had a profound influence on Hong Kong action cinema, and has been recognised as a landmark film credited with setting the template for the heroic bloodshed genre, with considerable influence on both the Hong Kong film industry and Hollywood.
Produced with a tight budget and released with virtually no advertising, 'A Better Tomorrow' broke Hong Kong's box office record and went on to become a blockbuster in Asia. The film is highly regarded, ranking #2 in the Best 100 Chinese Motion Pictures. Its success led to a sequel, 'A Better Tomorrow II', also directed by Woo, and 'A Better Tomorrow 3: Love & Death in Saigon', a prequel directed by Tsui Hark.
The film was Chow Yun-fat's breakout role and made him one of the top superstars in the Hong Kong film industry. Chow's character "Mark Lee" has been imitated by many fans even decades after the film's release. Following this film, Chow collaborated with Woo on several more films, the most notable of which include 'The Killer' and 'Hard Boiled'.
Plot
Sung Tse-ho works for the Triad, managing a lucrative printing and distributing operation that produces counterfeit American bank notes. Mark Lee is his best friend, bodyguard, and business partner. The prologue follows a day in the life of Ho and Mark as they watch a fresh batch of counterfeit notes being printed and meet with foreign clients to trade their product for counterfeit Chinese bank notes.
Ho is close to his younger brother, Kit, who has just graduated high school and is currently training to join the police. Ho hides his criminal life from his brother and encourages Kit's career choice, despite it putting them on opposite sides of the law. Ho's ailing father is aware of Ho's criminal activities and pleads for him to lead a life free from crime. Ho agrees, deciding that he will retire from the Triad after his next deal in Taiwan. Shing, a low ranking member, is sent along after Ho agrees to mentor him. The deal turns into an ambush by the Taiwanese triads, and a shootout ensues in which Ho and Shing flee into a sewage tunnel entrance, pursued by local law enforcement. Ho tells Shing to run, and surrenders to the police in order to buy time for him to escape. Ho is then sentenced to three years in prison.
After learning of the botched deal, a Triad enforcer attempts to kidnap Ho's father as leverage to ensure Ho's silence in prison; Ho's father is fatally stabbed before Kit and his girlfriend Jackie manage to subdue his attacker. With his dying breath, he pleads Kit to forgive his brother for his criminal actions. Kit is enraged and blames Ho for their father's death. Mark travels to Taiwan to get answers from the head of the Taiwanese triad. He visits a restaurant where the gangster who planned the ambush is dining, and kills him following a brutal gunfight with his bodyguards. Mark is injured by two shots to his right leg, leaving him crippled and needing a leg brace to walk.
Three years pass, and Ho is released from prison. As he walks out, he is approached by an unnamed policeman, who offers to take him back to headquarters so he can rejoin his old organization. Ho, remorseful of his actions and determined to start a new life, turns down the offer and instead gets a job driving for a taxi company, run by another ex-con named Ken. Ho spots Mark during one of his shifts; in contrast to the contents of Mark's optimistic letters to him in prison, he discovers that Mark is now a broken man after Shing stripped him of his position in the family and cast him aside in his rise to power. During an emotional reunion, Mark urges Ho to confront Shing, wanting to take back their old positions in the Triad, but Ho refuses.
Ho seeks out Kit, now a police officer, hoping to reconcile with his brother. He is harshly rebuffed by Kit despite the pleas of Jackie, who believes the two should reconcile in order to carry out their father's final wishes. Kit sees Ho as a criminal and responsible for their father's death. Kit is also resentful of the fact that his familial tie to Ho is preventing him from professional advancement. In an effort to prove himself to his superiors and further distance himself from his brother's criminal past, Kit becomes obsessed with bringing down Shing, despite Ho's warnings to stay away from the dangerous case.
Shing, hearing of Ho's return to Hong Kong, tries to persuade him to return and help expand the Triad into drug trafficking. When Ho refuses, Shing has his men raid the taxi company, beat Mark near to death, and lure Kit into a trap that leaves him hospitalized with gunshot wounds. Ho is dismayed but is still hesitant to take action. An emotional speech by Mark finally persuades Ho to start fighting back.
Mark steals a computer tape containing printing plate data from the counterfeiting business and shoots his way out of the building, with Ho arriving on a motorbike to rescue him. It is revealed that it was Shing who set up the ambush three years ago that got Ho arrested. Shing, eager to get rid of Ho for good, sets up Yie, the head of the Triad, by lying about Ho wanting to make peace and then shooting him dead; the witnesses are told to lie to the police that Ho was the shooter. Ho and Mark use the tape to blackmail Shing in exchange for money and an escape boat. Ho ensures that the tape is passed to Kit as proof of Shing's crimes. Using Shing as a hostage, Ho and Mark take the money to a pier, where Shing's men await. There, Ho implores Mark to escape by himself in the boat. Mark accepts, albeit with hesitation.
After Mark's departure, Kit arrives on the scene intending to make an arrest, but Shing's men take him hostage. A deal is made to exchange Shing for Kit, but the trade spirals into first a standoff and then a frenzied shootout. Ho and Kit are forced to team up against Shing's men, and are overwhelmed and wounded. Mark, hearing the sounds of the ongoing hostilities returns to the scene, guns blazing. Ho, Kit and Mark kill a majority of Shing's henchmen, but not without injury. During a lull in the gunfight, Ho attempts to make peace with Kit but is rebuffed again. Mark berates Kit, telling him that Ho's present actions have atoned for whatever wrong he had done in the past. During this emotional moment, Mark is shot in the back and killed by Shing.
As the police approach, Shing mocks Ho, who has run out of ammunition. He ridicules him and his brother, proclaiming that once he enters police custody, his money and power will ensure his swift release. Kit, finally seeing eye to eye with his brother, hands him his revolver, and Ho shoots Shing dead. Kit watches Shing's body fall to the ground, unsure of what to do next. Unexpectedly, Ho handcuffs himself to Kit. The film ends with the reconciled brothers walking together towards the gathered crowd of police.
Cast
* Ti Lung as Sung Tse-ho
* Leslie Cheung as Sung Tse-kit
* Chow Yun-fat as Mark Lee
* Emily Chu as Jackie, the girlfriend of Kit
* Waise Lee as Shing
* Shing Fui-On as Shing's right-hand man
* Kenneth Tsang as Ken, the leader of the taxi company Ho joins
* Tien Feng, as the father of Ho and Kit
* John Woo, the film director, plays the bespectacled Taiwanese police chief
* Tsui Hark as a music judge (cameo)
* Stephen Chow, in an uncredited minor role as a bodyguard of the Taiwanese triad leader.
Theme song
The film's theme song is "In the Sentimental Past" (), performed by lead Leslie Cheung, composed and arranged by Joseph Koo and written by Wong Jim.
Box office
'A Better Tomorrow' grossed $34,651,324 HKD at the Hong Kong box office.
Musical references
*During the nightclub scene, the song being played in the background (, Gei2 heoi2 fung1 jyu5) is the Cantonese version of a classic South Korean song called 'Hee Na Ree'() sung originally by Goo Chang-mo(:ko:) in 1985. The Cantonese version in the movie was sung by Roman Tam, considered the "godfather" of the musical genre Cantopop.
* In the scene where Kit rushes Jackie to a music recital, the violinist playing before Jackie plays the theme song of the movie.
* Also heard in the soundtrack is "Sparrowfall 1", a track from Brian Eno's 1978 album, 'Music for Films'.
*The film also contains "Birdy's Theme" (from the film 'Birdy') by Peter Gabriel incorporated into the soundtrack.
*In the scene where Ho meets Jackie back stage of the music recital to tell her he is leaving, the children's choir is singing Tomorrow will be Better (/), written by Lo Ta-yu. This is likely the origin of the film's English title.
Film references
* Woo's film was partially inspired by the 1967 Lung Kong film (pinyin 'Yngxing bns') which has the same Chinese name but a different English name: 'Story of a Discharged Prisoner', which is No. 39 on the Hong Kong Film Awards list of the Top 100 Chinese Films.
* The film was also partially inspired by 'The Brothers', a 1979 Hong Kong crime film, plot elements of which were reimagined for 'A Better Tomorrow'. 'The Brothers' had a similar plot about two brothers on opposing sides of the law, the elder brother a mobster and the younger brother a cop. In turn, 'The Brothers' was a remake of 'Deewaar' (1975), a hit Indian crime drama written by SalimJaved.
* Chow Yun-fat's entrance to the restaurant before the shoot-out is John Woo's homage to 'Mean Streets'.
* The scene in which Mark Lee tells the story of being forced to drink urine is apparently based on a real incident involving Chow Yun-fat and director Ringo Lam, according to Bey Logan on the DVD commentary. This scene was recreated in Woo's 'Bullet in the Head'.
Cultural impact
* After the film, teenage boys in Hong Kong wore long dusters in emulation of Chow's character even though the climate was sub-tropical. In fact, in colloquial Cantonese, trench coats are called "Mark Gor Lau" (literally, Brother Mark's coat).
* The Wu-Tang Clan has a song named after the film on their 1997 album 'Wu-Tang Forever.'
* The Wu-Tang Clan 20th anniversary album also shares the name 'A Better Tomorrow'.
*The anime series 'Cowboy Bebop' has many references to the film series, including the last fight between Spike and Vicious in the episode "The Real Folk Blues (Part 2)" which parallels the final shoot out in "A Better Tomorrow 2".
*The character Mr. Chang from the 'Black Lagoon' is closely patterned after Chow's character Mark in both visual design and characterisation.
*Chow wore Alain Delon sunglasses in the movie. After the movie, Hong Kong was sold out of Alain Delon's sunglasses. French star Alain Delon sent Chow a personal thank you note.
*It was adapted into a Thai film (without copyright) 'Petchpayakkarat' in 1988, starring Sombat Metanee, Sorapong Chatree with Pumpuang Duangjan but the film was not a success, both in earnings and in reviews.
*In 2009, 'Empire Magazine' named it #20 in a poll of the 20 Greatest Gangster Movies You've Never Seen* (*Probably)
* The 1994 Bollywood film 'Aatish: Feel the Fire' (1994), directed by Sanjay Gupta, was an unofficial remake combining elements of both the Bollywood classic 'Deewaar' (1975) and John Woo's 'A Better Tomorrow'. The film starred Sanjay Dutt, Atul Agnihotri, Aditya Pancholi and Shakti Kapoor.
*In September 2010, prolific Korean filmmaker Song Hae-Sung released 'Mujeogja' (Invincible), which was an official Korean language remake of John Woo's 'A Better Tomorrow'. It opened to positive response at the Korean box-office. John Woo and Terence Chang also serve as Executive Producers for Mujeogja; which was a joint production between South Korea, Japan and China.
*The theme song was covered in 2016 by Louis Koo and Leo Ku in memoriam of Cheung Kwok-wing.
*'A Better Tomorrow' received wide appraisals after it released, and then its fame spread to the West film industry in the next few decades. The film heavily influenced filmmakers such as Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and the Wachowskis.
Remakes
See also
* 'A Better Tomorrow 2'
* 'A Better Tomorrow 3'
References
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