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Saturday, December 2, 2023

A BETTER TOMORROW / YING HUNG BOON SIK (1986)

Still highly rated, career-markers for all parties, now looking pretty threadbare, particularly for writer/director John Woo who locked onto his Hong Kong Actioner voice & style after making 15 films in 12 years.  But Better Tomorrows were in the pipeline, literally so with two sequels (not seen here), and actually so starting with THE KILLER/’89.  Leslie Cheung and Chow Yun-Fat star as rough-playing gangster pals, part of a big drug & counterfeit operation, their lives complicated by cops, prison, demanding bosses and now Cheung’s kid brother a new Police Inspector.  Woo seems uninterested in these personal matters for much of the film (why should he be?), instead giving all his attention to the action scenes (fights, chases, shoot-outs) which are relatively crude.  And not only by current standards.  Worse, he lets two of his leads, Emily Chu as a comic cipher of a girlfriend (hopelessly trapped in misogynistic shtick); and a shamelessly showboating Yun-Fat.  At one point, Yun-Fat is smoking, sloppily stuffing his face, twiddling with his tongue, rattling out dialogue, and chewing on a wooden matchstick . . . all at once.  Riveting in all the wrong ways.  Hopefully, THE KILLERS (coming up shortly on MAKSQUIBS) will show Woo turning the corner toward his own better tomorrow.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  Known for lux, precise, cinematically choreographed action (certainly during his Hollywood decade: ‘93 - ‘04), Woo returned to Asia with a worth-the-wait grand, historical epic, RED CLIFF/’08.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/03/chi-bi-xia-jue-zhan-tian-xia-red-cliff.html

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