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| Chow Yun-fat in A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon |
Cast: Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Anita Mui, Shih Kien, Saburo Tokito, Maggie Cheung Ho-yee, Chen Wai-lun, Andrew Kam, Foo Wang-tat, Nam Yin. Screenplay: Edward Leung, Tai Foo-ho, Tsui Hark. Cinematography: Horace Wong, Yung Chun-wa, Chik Kim-kiy. Art direction: Lu Zifeng. Film editing: Marco Mak, Tsui Hark, David Wu. Music: Lowell Lo, David Wu.
A stand-alone film posing as a prequel, Tsui Hark's A Better Tomorrow III has only the presence of the most charismatic actor in the first two films, Chow Yun-fat, in the role of Mark Lee, to link it with the first two. And the only significant things it adds to the character are explanations of how he learned to shoot and how he got the black duster that he swaggers about in. The plot is summed up in the subtitle, Love and Death in Saigon. It's 1974 and the Vietnam War is coming to its end when Mark goes there to help his uncle (Shih Kien) and cousin, Michael Cheung Chi-mun (Tony Leung Ka-fai), close up shop in Saigon and return to Hong Kong. But he gets in trouble at the airport and has to be helped out by Chow Ying-kit (Anita Mui), a woman with whom he has been flirting. Though Mark finds Kit attractive, it's his cousin Michael who falls hard for her. She, on the other hand, prefers Mark. She also turns out to be involved in a variety of shady businesses, including gun smuggling. So not only do we have a romantic triangle to spin the plot on, we also have various underworld conflicts as well as the chaos of the fall of Saigon to provide the usual bloodshed. It's not a bad movie: There's plenty of action, Mui and Chow are in good form, and there's some poignancy in the fate of the characters. But it lacks the exhilaration of style that John Woo brought to the first two installments.
