reiher@amethyst.jpl.nasa.gov (Peter Reiher) (05/24/90)
A BETTER TOMORROW I, II, AND III
A film review by Peter Reiher
Copyright 1990 Peter Reiher
[This is the second in a series of reviews of films I saw at the recent
AFI Los Angeles Internation Film Festival. For a report on the entire
festival, see rec.arts.cinema.]
Not too many places outside of Hollywood make Hollywood movies. The
British do a few, the French make comedies sufficiently like American ones to
get remade in English, Japanese samurai movies used to be rather similar to
American Westerns (but now both genres are dead). That's about it, except for
Hong Kong. Hong Kong makes action/adventure films that fit very well into the
Hollywood mold, except, of course, that the characters all tend to be Chinese.
Otherwise, you could easily be seeing the product of Warner Brothers or, more
plausibly, New World Cinema.
They do have their own local twists. The culture they come from is
different, and some of that inevitably shows up in Hong Kong films. They
don't have quite the budget American studios have, so some of the technical
aspects of their films are a little rougher. By and large, the films are set
in Hong Kong or China, too, which aren't the most popular locales for Hollywood
films. None the less, the pacing of the films, the subject matter, their
overall style are very familiar. Hong Kong is thus in a good position to steal
away a little of the worldwide box office appeal of American films.
A BETTER TOMORROW and its two sequels are cases in point. These are cop
films, very much like the torrent of cop films flowing out of Hollywood. A
BETTER TOMORROW is a hybrid of two old formulae: the brothers/friends who grow
up to be on different sides of the law, and the criminal tries to go straight
despite the urgings of his old buddies. The central figure in A BETTER
TOMORROW, played by Leslie Cheung, is a gangster involved in counterfeiting.
His brother has just joined the police force, and, early in the film, he's
caught and sent to jail. When he gets out, he wants to reform, but no one will
believe him. And, in best Hollywood tradition, all problems are solved by
shooting lots and lots of people.
There is a typically Chinese concern for family in A BETTER TOMORROW not
felt so strongly in American films. The greatest desire of the central
character is to reconcile with his brother. And loyalty is also an important
theme, more so than in American action pictures. Cheung's buddy is being
squeezed out of the gang, and treated very badly, and only by rejoining the
gang can Cheung help him. But these themes are not played so strongly or with
such an exclusively Chinese tone as to make the film seem particularly foreign
to American audiences.
What does make it foreign is the atrocious subtitling. A BETTER TOMORROW
may have had the worst subtitling job I've ever seen. It appeared to be done
by someone with the mistaken belief that he knows English. The subtitles
veered from unintentionally funny to incomprehensible.
That's not all that's wrong with A BETTER TOMORROW. It sets itself up to
be judged by the same standards as American films, and, by those standards, it
comes up short. The script, by John Woo, Chan Hing Kai, and Leung Suk Wah, is
rambling and untidy. It takes a while to get down to business. And the film
is technically inferior to a typical American production. The cinematography
is uninspired, at best, and lots of small details of special effects, sound
editing, and other background issues are sloppy. A single tune is played
relentlessly on the score.
On the other hand, the acting is excellent. Cheung, Chow Yun-fatt, and
Ti Lung instill a sense of reality and likability into their characters. One
car chase is like another, one gunfight is like another, so action films really
have to rely on their characters to distinguish themselves from the pack. The
leading actors in A BETTER TOMORROW all have the kind of charisma and style
necessary to make their film stand out. And director Woo handles the action
scenes pretty well.
The first sequel, A BETTER TOMORROW II, is similar in tone. Actually, I
liked it better. The subtitling had improved, there was more action, and
everything moved faster. A dubious plot trick necessitated by the ending of
the first film was given no more respect than it deserved, showing that the
filmmakers weren't deluded about what sort of film they were making. It was,
at its heart, more of the same, just as LETHAL WEAPON II was more of the same
- a skillful repetition of the elements of the original that appealed to
audiences. Being able to recreate the atmosphere in a sequel is actually
quite tricky, and writer Tsui Hark and co-writer and director John Woo pulled
it off very well. This film also suffers from some of the original's flaws.
It rambles, with an unnecessary side-trip to New York City, in this case. It
isn't especially sensible. And it's technically a bit rough.
The third film, A BETTER TOMORROW III: LOVE AND DEATH IN SAIGON, is quite
different than its predecessors. Set earlier than the first two films, it
deals with one of the main characters from the first film attempting to help
some friends get out of Saigon before the Communist takeover. Romance plays a
much larger role in this film, and it's technically superior to the first two.
But there's less action, and only one of the characters who made the earlier
films interesting is here. Actually, it's really not even the same character,
just the same actor playing a similar character with the same name. There's
nothing in the third film to make us believe that he has anything in common
with the character in the earlier films. New writers Tai Fu-Ho and Leung
Yiu-Ming do not capture the aura of the first film, nor does Tsui Hark, taking
over as director. On the whole, A BETTER TOMORROW III is the least
interesting of these films, even though it is the most polished.
A BETTER TOMORROW I, II, and III are interesting, if for no other reason,
as rare instances of other nations trying to beat Hollywood at its own game.
Certainly, within Hong Kong, they succeeded, as all three films were very
popular there. But somehow I doubt if they will significantly crack the
international markets, much less the highly lucrative U.S. market. They lack
the craft of American commercial films, though the artistic level is about the
same. Which is not necessarily a compliment. Lovers of action films will
probably get a kick out of them, wherever they live and whatever language they
speak. But Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger need
not stay awake fretting over a Peril From the East. Superficial commercial
films from Hong Kong don't beat superficial commercial films from U.S. Yet.
Peter Reiher
reiher@onyx.jpl.nasa.gov
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