A Better Tomorrow II (1987)

A Better Tomorrow II (1987)
Chinese Title: 英雄本色續集
Translation: True Colors of a Hero - Sequel

 

Starring: Ti Lung, Leslie Cheung Kwok-Wing, Dean Shek Tin, Chow Yun-Fat, Guan Shan, Emily Chu Bo-Yee, Kenneth Tsang Kong, Shing Fui-On, Lau Siu-Ming, Ng Man-Tat, Lung Ming-Yan
Director: John Woo, Tsui Hark
Action Director: Tony Ching Siu-Tung

 

I bet there are hundreds of movie reviews out there that start off with the author’s thoughts on sequels that didn’t need to made. This happens all the time, generally on account of the studios being greedy or the main actor (or director) being in a lurch and needing a possible hit to rejuvenate their careers, like Mike Meyers and the fourth Shrek movie. A Better Tomorrow was a smash hit in Hong Kong, becoming one of the top-grossing films of the entire decade, and transforming Chow Yun-Fat from box office poison to box office gold. However, in the eyes of director John Woo, the tragic stories of former Triads Mark Gor and Sung Tse-Ho had already been told.

But that didn’t stop director-producer Tsui Hark from pressuring John Woo into making a sequel. On one hand, another movie would most likely be a guaranteed hit, especially with the newfound fame of both John Woo—he’d enjoyed success before, but not in the action genre—and Chow Yun-Fat. Moreover, Tsui Hark’s friend and Cinema City (the studio that produced the first film) founder Dean Shek was heavily in debt at the time, and another hit could help him get back into the black. On the other hand, the film ended with Chow Yun-Fat’s character dead. This being a semi-realistic gangster film, you can’t just snap Mark Gor back to life, or transport a parallel universe version of him into our reality.

Tsui Hark and John Woo did figure out a way to bring him back, but it’s rather contrived.

We open with Sung Tse-Ho (a returning Ti Lung) in prison after the events of the first film, whose crimes included being framed for the murder of his former Triad boss. He is approached by an Inspector Wu (Lau Siu-Ming, of The Butterfly Murders and A Chinese Ghost Story), who’s on the trail of a gang of counterfeiters in Hong Kong. Wu is about to retire and would like to bring down the gang as the nail in the coffin of his career. He wants Sung’s help because the suspect is Johnny Lung (Dean Shek, of Mantis Fists and Tiger Claws of Shaolin and Drunken Master), Ho’s former mentor. Sung initially turns down the idea, but relents when he finds out that his younger brother, Kit (a returning Leslie Cheung), is now going undercover.

Kit tries to schmooze his way into Lung’s good graces by wooing his daughter, Peppy (Regina Kent, of Project A II). And this, in spite of his wife, Jacky (a returning Emily Chu), being pregnant. What we do learn is that Johnny Lung has actually gone straight, pouring years worth of dirty money into building a legitimate shipping business. Unfortunately, times are tough for Lung, who isn’t making enough money to even pay off his employees. His business partner, Ko (Guan Shan, of The Himalayan and Broken Oath), suggests renting out their ships to a crime boss (Ng Man-Tat, of Tiger Cage and Holy Weapon) for some more lucrative transactions, but Lung is determined to go straight.

Things start coming unglued when Johnny and the crime boss get in an argument, which results in the latter pulling a gun on him. During the struggle, Ko’s hired killer (Lung Ming-Yan, of Triads – The Inside Story and Hero of Tomorrow) shoots the crime boss, although Johnny thinks it was the revolver in his hand that went off. As a result, a horrified Johnny flees Hong Kong for NYC, where his brother lives, now serving the community as a priest. But Ko, who’d been planning a hostile takeover of the business (to serve as a front for his counterfeiting activities) for some time, isn’t done with Lung yet. He has his right-hand-man (Shing Fui-On, of Untold Story and Cheetah on Fire) murder Peppy. At the same time, Ko has his American clients send their enforcers in NYC to kill Johnny. They end up killing his brother and some of his parishioners (including a little girl) instead. At this point, Johnny completely snaps and is committed to a mental institution.

Enter Ken Lee (or Ken Gor), the twin brother of Mark whom nobody ever knew (or talked) about. As you might expect, he’s also played by Chow Yun-Fat. See, they found a way to shoehorn him into the story after all! Ken is a former rough-and-tumble Triad who ditched the business and moved the States, where he opened up a restaurant. When he learns—somehow?—of Dean Shek’s committal to the booby-hatch, he sneaks Johnny out of there and tries to nurse back to health. He’s eventually successful, and the two fly back to Hong Kong to join forces with Sung and Kit to get revenge on Ko, who’s living large with his counterfeit profits.

John Woo has disowned this movie, considering it more of a mercenary project than anything he actually wanted (and now could) to do. The whole “twin brother” plot point is obviously contrived. Moreover, the focus on Dean Shek’s Johnny Lung character ends up robbing the film of much of its emotional impact. I’ll get to that in a moment. Suffice to say, this is one of those cases where it is obvious that director John Woo was on auto-pilot, despite the great care he’d invested in these characters in the previous film.

You see, in the first A Better Tomorrow, counterfeiting was one of the crimes that Sung and Mark’s organization was involved it, but it was mostly a background detail. It could have been drugs, prostitutes or even smuggling pistachios and the story wouldn’t have changed a bit. The film had found its footing in the main characters’ quests for redemption, either in the eyes of his brother (in Sung Tse-Ho’s case), or rising above the subhuman existence that Mark was relegated to after getting his knee blown to pieces. And the friendship between those two men formed the compelling emotional core of the film.

This film lacks that human element. Although Ti Lung and Leslie Cheung share some good scenes together, the fact that both men are undercover limits those interactions. Ti Lung’s Sung Tse-Ho doesn’t even know about Ken Lee’s existence initially, so they can’t play off of each other like they did in the previous film. And although Ken and Johnny Lung’s characters are the focus of the film’s second act, the latter spends that entire section of the movie as a drooling man-baby, which both overstays its welcome and is bereft of any real emotion.

There are other ideas that are not explored in this, although John Woo's original cut ran three hours and the editing was done without his involvement. That suggests that they might have gotten more attention had the film stock been saved. The late Kenneth Tsang returns here as Uncle Ken, but nothing is said about his taxi cab business staffed by ex-cons. His not wanting to go back to his former life was an important theme in the first film, but now he’s our heroes go-between for getting illegal arms. How did that happen? There’s also a character who appears to be an author of serialized gangster stories for magazines who collects Triad memorabilia (like Mark Gor’s infamous trenchcoat), but we never learn what his deal is. It just feels like a contrived way to make a few nods to the original movie.

Most people tend to forgive the faults in the story on account of the action. There are a few gunfights here and there in the first two acts. Act Two closes with a really well-shot, claustrophobic shoot-out in a seedy hotel in NYC, with Chow Yun-Fat blowing people to pieces left and right with a 12-guage shotgun. However, most people will always talk about the finale, in which three of our protagonists storm Ko’s mansion and kill upwards of a hundred people with Uzis, Mac-10s, pistols, shotguns, grenades and katana blades. The old Reel.com review referred to it as a “nitroglycerin-in-a-blender climax.” It is arguably one of the greatest shootouts in the entire history of cinema, although I still prefer the set pieces from The Killer and Hard Boiled to this one, personally. Nonetheless, this is the only John Woo Heroic Bloodshed film whose action got a Best Choreography nod at the Hong Kong Film Awards (it lost to Jackie Chan’s Project A 2), so that definitely says something about the just how good the finale is. The question is, are you willing to forgive its other missteps on account of those last 10 minutes?