A Better Tomorrow II (John Woo, 1987)

Ti Lung, Dean Shek, and Chow Yun-fat in A Better Tomorrow II

Cast: Ti Lung, Chow Yun-fat, Leslie Cheung, Dean Shek, Kwan Shan, Emily Chu, Kenneth Tsang, Shing Fui-On, Lam Chung, Ng Man-tat, Peter Wang, Lung Ming-yan, Louis Roth, Regina Kent, Ken Boyle. Screenplay: Chan Hing-ka, Leung Suk-wah, John Woo, Tsui Hark. Cinematography: Wong Wing-hung. Production design: Andy Lee, Luk Tze-fung. Film editing: David Wu. Music: Joseph Koo, Lowell Lo. 

When you have a big action movie hit like A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986), you naturally want to make a sequel. But what do you do when the most popular character was killed off in the first film? You give him a previously unknown identical twin, of course. And not just a look-alike, but a twin with the same mannerisms, like chewing on an unlit matchstick. and equal proficiency at gunplay. And so Chow Yun-fat's Mark Lee is reincarnated in A Better Tomorrow II as Ken Lee. The sequel is bloodier and noisier and more improbable than the original, and it adds a fourth protagonist to the original trio of Ho (Ti Lung), Kit (Leslie Cheung), and Mark, now Ken (Chow): Dean Shek as Lung Sei, the target of a police investigation who turns out to be a good guy being framed. The somewhat too twisty plot takes Lung to New York, fleeing arrest for murder, where he meets up with Ken, a restaurant owner who is in trouble with the mob in America. It also introduces a novel kind of psychotherapy: Lung has a mental breakdown when he learns that the mob back in Hong Kong has killed his daughter and he witnesses the murder of a friend and a little girl. Ken takes it upon himself to heal the catatonic Lung by subjecting him to gunfire: They're attacked by both the Hong Kong and American mobsters. Lung recovers in time to help, and somehow the two of them make their way back home, where they join forces with Ho and Kit. Woo, who was reluctant to make the sequel, agreed in order to give Shek, a friend of his in financial difficulties, a job. Tension between Woo and producer Tsui Hark almost derailed the film, which spends too much time in the New York scenes, but the action sequences are the usual spectacular and inventive overkill. 

A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)

Chow Yun-fat and Ti Lung in A Better Tomorrow

Cast: Ti Lung, Leslie Cheung, Chow Yun-fat, Emily Chu, Waise Lee, Tien Feng, Kenneth Tsang, Shing Fui-on, Sek Yin-si, Wang Hsieh, Leung Ming, John Woo, Tsui Hark. Screenplay: Chan Hing-ka, Leung Suk-wah, John Woo. Cinematography: Wong Wing-hang. Production design: Lui Chi Leung. Film editing: Ma Kam, David Woo. Music: Joseph Koo. 

John Woo's terrific action thriller A Better Tomorrow is less stylized and more conventionally plotted than his later films, but it provides a satisfactory amount of bullets and blood squibs. It's based on an old trope of melodrama: estranged brothers. Sung Tse-ho (Ti Lung) is a gangster involved in a counterfeit operation, and Sung Tse-kit (Leslie Cheung) is a rookie cop. Ho is trying to go straight, however, and he goes to prison partly to sever his ties with the mob in order to make a fresh start after his release. But Kit finds that his older brother's record is an impediment to his advancement in the police force, and he rejects Ho's attempts to reconcile, blaming him for their father's death. The plot centers on their rapprochement, which is ultimately aided by Ho's best friend and fellow mobster, Mark Lee (Chow Yun-fat). Though billed third, Chow steals the movie as the blithe hit man who gets wounded in a shootout, loses favor with the mob, and eventually turns against them. A Better Tomorrow was such a big hit that sequels became inevitable, but as usual the original is the best.