A Better Tomorrow II
Director: John Woo
Year: 1987
Rating: 8.5
The first A Better
Tomorrow was such a smash that a sequel had to be made and though it lacks
much of the emotional power of the first it contains a lot more fireworks.
This one opens with Ti Lung in jail and he is forced by the police to go
spy on his old mentor - Lung (Dean Shek). The pressure used on him is that
his brother Kit is going undercover to get Lung as well and Ti Lung wants
to protect him. It turns out that Lung is now completely straight, but tragedies
occur that drives him out of business and out of his mind. It is this out
of mind period that stops this movie from getting as high a rating as the
first - it just goes on for too long and is badly over acted. And Dean Shek
can over act!
At least he ends up in NYC where the twin
brother of Mark (yes that old dog is sent out to hunt once more. They had
to bring back Chow Yun Fat) - Ken is running a restaurant. It turns out that
he is as handy with guns as he is with a wok. Chow Yun Fat also gets to do
a turn in English (at least I think that is Wong speaking) in which he utters
the famous line "rice just like father and mother - don't fuck with my family".
As expected all the good guys end up back
in HK ready to do battle and what a battle it is. The last 20 minutes is
just a huge blood bath of bodies piled on top of bodies and our heroes looking
like Swiss cheese by the end. Ti Lung gets to wield a sword as if in his
Shaw movie days. The last scene is a classic as three of them are sitting
on a couch covered in blood from multiple gunshot wounds and surrounded by
100's of dead bodies waiting for the cops to finally show up and one of them
says "We are dying. Can we leave?" Choreographed by Ching Siu-tung showing
that gunplay action was within his skill set. Also appearing are Emily Chu,
Kenneth Tsang, Shing Fui-on, Kwan Shan and Mg Man-tat.
Note: In an interview in the book Asian
Pop Cinema, Woo mentions that his first cut of this film was three hours
long, but he was ordered to edit it down. Woo goes on to say that five different
people got involved with the editing and Woo never saw the outcome until
the film was completed. He was not very happy with the finished product.
Directors Cut anyone?
