![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Review: A Better Tomorrow (英雄本色) (1986)
I finally got around to watching this movie after years of hearing about it. I can see why it resonated a lot with men of an older demographic lol. I would recommend this movie for people who like stories about loyalty and brotherhood, or if you want to see gun action.
Spoilers.
Story
Ho was a crime boss, who often worked together with Mark. Ho had a younger brother Kit who was unaware of his dealings and was a student in the police academy. It was Ho’s wish for his brother not to follow into a life of crime. Ho was planning to leave after a last job in Taiwan, but was caught by the police and sent to jail. It was later revealed that it was Shing, a subordinate of Ho and Mark’s, who set up the ambush. Mark attempted revenge and in the process he was shot in the leg. The Taiwanese crime lords sent an assassin after Ho and Kit’s father and ended up killing him.
When he was released from jail, Ho declined to re-enter the world of crime. In the meantime, his brother Kit had become a police officer and hated him for being a criminal and the cause of their father’s death. Mark had fallen from his position and was an assistant for the crime. It was Shing who was now at the top.
Upon Ho’s release from jail and return to Hong Kong, Kit was very upset as it was his relation with his brother that kept him from promotion in the police department. Shing tried to recruit Ho since he had business connections, but Ho declined. As payback, his workplace was attacked and Mark was beaten.
Mark and Ho eventually decided that they would have one last go. They stole tapes that were proof of their illegal counterfeiting business. Ho arranged to give the tapes to Shing but in reality he gave them to Kit. He took Shing hostage when he arrived, and Shing’s people had taken Kit hostage. They had a hostage exchange, that resulted in a gunfight.
During a lull in the gunfight, Mark tried to get Ho and Kit to reconcile, which failed. However, after Mark was gunned down, Ho and Kit worked together to gun down Shing’s people. At the end, Ho cuffed himself to Kit and they walked off.
The moral of the story was very black and white. Ho even assured Kit that their entire life, Kit had been right to walk the path of the police officer. All crime must go punished. Mark and Shing paid with their lives, and Ho would pay with jail time.
I can see why this movie resonated with those who love themes of loyalty as Ho + Mark and Ho + Kit all have very deep relationships and they would die for one another. But through it all, there was still a very strong sense of good and bad.
Production
It was fine. I think the reason why this movie was so famous, other than it being a hit with men of a certain age, was probably the gunfights. There were several notable gunfights in this movie, including Mark’s revenge scene, as well as the end.
The acting was decent. Chow Yun-fat was the most charismatic in my opinion.
I don’t know where to say this so I’ll say it here. But some parts of the movie, particularly scenes between Mark and Ho were pretty charged to the point that it felt kind of homoerotic lol. When Ho first spoke with Mark after returning to Hong Kong and they had an emotional reunion, I kept feeling like they were going to kiss because they obviously missed each other and were affectionate lol. I’m not saying any of this is bad, by the way. I think that perhaps this movie might have been a hit with the male demographic because it portrays friendships and brotherhoods in this very romantic way.
Characters
Sung Tze-ho/Ho
I would say Ho was the main character. He was the pov character, as well as the link between the three main characters. He was a crime boss, but he was also very aware that he was not walking a proper path. He appreciated that his younger brother Kit had a very upright moral code and he didn’t want him to lose that. At the beginning of the movie, Ho’s father urged him to remove himself from the world of crime, which Ho planned to do.
Ho and Mark were a duo. Ho was the calm one, Mark was the rambunctious one. The two of them started the movie off mentoring Shing. When Ho was ambushed in Taiwan, he briefly suspected Shing but Shing insisted it wasn’t him. Ho went to jail for three years, receiving letters from Mark. He didn’t reveal anything about his crime business while in jail. Upon release, a Taiwanese crime lord wanted to recruit him but he turned the offer down and returned to Hong Kong where he became a taxi driver.
Ho mostly stayed out of Kit’s way because he understood that Kit was upset by him. But Ho never stopped loving him as a brother. The only time he sought Kit out was to advise him on how to navigate the crime world, right before Ho and Mark were going to launch their attack. Afterwards, Ho only gave the tape to Kit through Jackie.
Ho’s feelings towards Kit were very much loving from afar, because he knew that his existence was fundamentally against Kit’s moral code. He respected that Kit was such an upright person and he didn’t want to tarnish that. So that was why he was content with staying away. In the end, after taking down Shing who backstabbed him and Mark, Ho was content to be arrested once again for his crimes.
I don’t know how to describe Ho as an archetype. He has a very strong moral code like Kit, just that he knows he’s on the wrong side and he’s content to pay the price for it.
Mark Lee
Mark was Ho’s comrade in arms. The two of them worked their way up together. So of course when Ho was attacked and arrested in Taiwan, Mark sought revenge.
When Ho was in jail, Mark wrote letters to him insisting that everything was fine. So it was a surprise to Ho when he returned and Mark was very much not okay. He had a limp due to his injury in the gunfight, and he was now demoted to an errand boy. When Shing gave him tip money, he threw it on the ground. Contrast that with the first scene we saw Mark and Shing, in which Mark gave Shing a wad of money because he had a cough and told him to see a doctor.
Mark told Ho that he was biding his time for a good opportunity to get his revenge on Shing for taking them down. It was Mark who convinced Ho that they had to get revenge on Shing for being a backstabber. Mark was the one who came out guns blazing. He was the hothead.
Mark wanted Ho and Kit to reconcile and tried to do it by force. It had to take him dying for it to happen.
Mark was Ho’s opposite, the more hotheaded one to Ho’s calm demeanour. Though we didn’t see much interaction between Mark and Kit until the end, I suspect that Kit at least understood that Mark was a close friend to Ho and someone who always had his back. And perhaps that was why Kit respected Mark to be upset when he was gunned down.
Sung Tze-kit/Kit
Kit was Ho’s younger brother. When we first met him, he was a young lad. He was entering the police academy, and he was in a relationship with a ditzy girl called Jackie. I think Ho really appreciated this naïve and straightforward nature in his brother. It’s not uncommon in crime story lines for people to want their loved ones to stay on the right side of the law for their own protection and Kit was that for Ho.
Kit’s first encounter with danger was when the assassin came to kill his father. Ho’s arrest was published in the newspaper so Kit would have found out about his brother’s true occupation shortly after. In the years during Ho’s jailtime, Kit became a police officer, and we saw that he was very serious about rising through the ranks. He blamed Ho entirely for him being blocked from promotion. Honestly there were times during this arc where Kit felt a bit whiny, but I can understand that his resentment was more about Ho keeping secrets, Ho keeping secrets despite knowing Kit’s nature, and also Kit feeling upset that their father died because of Ho’s actions.
Jackie tried to mediate between Ho and Kit though it helped little. When Jackie passed on the tape from Ho to Kit, Kit realized that something was going to go down and that was why he made his way to the location, though he got caught in the action. At first, Kit was just trying to take down Shing. He was reluctant to bond with Ho when he was down, but he was moved when Mark died and that was when he and Ho finally worked together.
After the gunfight, Kit was surprised that Ho cuffed himself. Perhaps he had always assumed that his brother didn’t know right from wrong, but Ho assured him that he did, that he knew he was a criminal, and that he never wanted Kit to change. At that point, Kit understood his brother’s love for him.
Shing
Shing started as a subordinate of Ho and Mark. We saw that Mark liked to play around with him but ultimately tried to act a big brother to him. When Shing and Ho went to do business in Taiwan, they were ambushed by the police. Ho briefly suspected Shing but Shing said that if he had set it up, then he wouldn’t have come with Ho. Ho urged Shing to run and he took the fall himself.
After the time skip, Shing became the big boss and we saw that he did not treat Mark as well as Mark and Ho did him in the past. When Ho came back on Shing’s radar, he tried to recruit him, and when he refused, he threatened those close to Ho. In preparation for the exchange of the tape, Shing killed another boss who seemed to have helped him when he first rose to power, showing that Shing himself had no loyalty. In the end, he was gunned down by Ho, using Kit’s gun.
Shing wasn’t a deep character but he didn’t need to be. He was a cutthroat snake who would use any means possible to rise to the top. But he also had no sense of trust or loyalty. He only trusted himself which perhaps was reasonable when all he did was backstab and burn bridges.
Jackie
Jackie was Kit’s girlfriend. She was a clumsy woman and they argued a lot but they stayed strong. When Ho returned, Jackie noticed that Kit was becoming very aggravated. She approached Ho, asking him to leave the city, but Ho could not. So she tried to instead reconcile the relationship but of course Kit could not agree. Jackie was the bridge when Ho passed the tape to Kit.
I think Jackie was meant to be a means of communication between Ho and Kit. Even if they weren’t talking, they would be in each other’s periphery, and Jackie would be how they would hear of each other. As well, Jackie represented a side of Kit who would be more willing to listen.
Themes
Loyalty
Like many other crime-related movies of this time, loyalty was a huge theme. The loyalty between Ho and Mark was strong. They were brothers for life (though Ho referred to Mark as a friend lol), and when Ho was ambushed, Mark took revenge for him. When Ho was in jail, Mark wrote letters so he wouldn’t feel abandoned, and he tried to dress his letters up so that Ho wouldn’t worry. Their reunion was an emotional one, you could see it between them. Though Ho was reluctant to return to the world of crime, he understood Mark who felt that they had unfinished business with Shing.
Ho was also deeply loyal to Kit. It’s a bit different since they’re blood brothers, but he never blamed Kit for being upset with him. As for Kit, he was upset with Ho for going against his moral code, but underneath it all, I think he understood that his brother did what he could for him.
Shing was a snake who had no sense of loyalty. He backstabbed Ho and Mark, he also backstabbed the other man who helped him get to the top. He gained power through fear.
Morality
Kit was extremely upright. Ho and Kit’s father said that when they were kids playing cops and robbers, Kit always begged to be the cop even if he was assigned robber. He always wanted to be the good guy catching the bad guy. So it was fitting for him to be a police officer. Even if he had to arrest his own brother, he would do it, though deep down inside there was a reluctance because that was his brother.
Ho was also upright but in addition to that, he understood that he was on the wrong side of the law, and he was prepared to pay. He paid his price while serving in prison in Taiwan, and he was prepared to pay again when he went to Hong Kong, if even just for his brother.
Overall
A simple movie, but it hit on major themes that would have resonated with certain viewers.
Spoilers.
Story
Ho was a crime boss, who often worked together with Mark. Ho had a younger brother Kit who was unaware of his dealings and was a student in the police academy. It was Ho’s wish for his brother not to follow into a life of crime. Ho was planning to leave after a last job in Taiwan, but was caught by the police and sent to jail. It was later revealed that it was Shing, a subordinate of Ho and Mark’s, who set up the ambush. Mark attempted revenge and in the process he was shot in the leg. The Taiwanese crime lords sent an assassin after Ho and Kit’s father and ended up killing him.
When he was released from jail, Ho declined to re-enter the world of crime. In the meantime, his brother Kit had become a police officer and hated him for being a criminal and the cause of their father’s death. Mark had fallen from his position and was an assistant for the crime. It was Shing who was now at the top.
Upon Ho’s release from jail and return to Hong Kong, Kit was very upset as it was his relation with his brother that kept him from promotion in the police department. Shing tried to recruit Ho since he had business connections, but Ho declined. As payback, his workplace was attacked and Mark was beaten.
Mark and Ho eventually decided that they would have one last go. They stole tapes that were proof of their illegal counterfeiting business. Ho arranged to give the tapes to Shing but in reality he gave them to Kit. He took Shing hostage when he arrived, and Shing’s people had taken Kit hostage. They had a hostage exchange, that resulted in a gunfight.
During a lull in the gunfight, Mark tried to get Ho and Kit to reconcile, which failed. However, after Mark was gunned down, Ho and Kit worked together to gun down Shing’s people. At the end, Ho cuffed himself to Kit and they walked off.
The moral of the story was very black and white. Ho even assured Kit that their entire life, Kit had been right to walk the path of the police officer. All crime must go punished. Mark and Shing paid with their lives, and Ho would pay with jail time.
I can see why this movie resonated with those who love themes of loyalty as Ho + Mark and Ho + Kit all have very deep relationships and they would die for one another. But through it all, there was still a very strong sense of good and bad.
Production
It was fine. I think the reason why this movie was so famous, other than it being a hit with men of a certain age, was probably the gunfights. There were several notable gunfights in this movie, including Mark’s revenge scene, as well as the end.
The acting was decent. Chow Yun-fat was the most charismatic in my opinion.
I don’t know where to say this so I’ll say it here. But some parts of the movie, particularly scenes between Mark and Ho were pretty charged to the point that it felt kind of homoerotic lol. When Ho first spoke with Mark after returning to Hong Kong and they had an emotional reunion, I kept feeling like they were going to kiss because they obviously missed each other and were affectionate lol. I’m not saying any of this is bad, by the way. I think that perhaps this movie might have been a hit with the male demographic because it portrays friendships and brotherhoods in this very romantic way.
Characters
Sung Tze-ho/Ho
I would say Ho was the main character. He was the pov character, as well as the link between the three main characters. He was a crime boss, but he was also very aware that he was not walking a proper path. He appreciated that his younger brother Kit had a very upright moral code and he didn’t want him to lose that. At the beginning of the movie, Ho’s father urged him to remove himself from the world of crime, which Ho planned to do.
Ho and Mark were a duo. Ho was the calm one, Mark was the rambunctious one. The two of them started the movie off mentoring Shing. When Ho was ambushed in Taiwan, he briefly suspected Shing but Shing insisted it wasn’t him. Ho went to jail for three years, receiving letters from Mark. He didn’t reveal anything about his crime business while in jail. Upon release, a Taiwanese crime lord wanted to recruit him but he turned the offer down and returned to Hong Kong where he became a taxi driver.
Ho mostly stayed out of Kit’s way because he understood that Kit was upset by him. But Ho never stopped loving him as a brother. The only time he sought Kit out was to advise him on how to navigate the crime world, right before Ho and Mark were going to launch their attack. Afterwards, Ho only gave the tape to Kit through Jackie.
Ho’s feelings towards Kit were very much loving from afar, because he knew that his existence was fundamentally against Kit’s moral code. He respected that Kit was such an upright person and he didn’t want to tarnish that. So that was why he was content with staying away. In the end, after taking down Shing who backstabbed him and Mark, Ho was content to be arrested once again for his crimes.
I don’t know how to describe Ho as an archetype. He has a very strong moral code like Kit, just that he knows he’s on the wrong side and he’s content to pay the price for it.
Mark Lee
Mark was Ho’s comrade in arms. The two of them worked their way up together. So of course when Ho was attacked and arrested in Taiwan, Mark sought revenge.
When Ho was in jail, Mark wrote letters to him insisting that everything was fine. So it was a surprise to Ho when he returned and Mark was very much not okay. He had a limp due to his injury in the gunfight, and he was now demoted to an errand boy. When Shing gave him tip money, he threw it on the ground. Contrast that with the first scene we saw Mark and Shing, in which Mark gave Shing a wad of money because he had a cough and told him to see a doctor.
Mark told Ho that he was biding his time for a good opportunity to get his revenge on Shing for taking them down. It was Mark who convinced Ho that they had to get revenge on Shing for being a backstabber. Mark was the one who came out guns blazing. He was the hothead.
Mark wanted Ho and Kit to reconcile and tried to do it by force. It had to take him dying for it to happen.
Mark was Ho’s opposite, the more hotheaded one to Ho’s calm demeanour. Though we didn’t see much interaction between Mark and Kit until the end, I suspect that Kit at least understood that Mark was a close friend to Ho and someone who always had his back. And perhaps that was why Kit respected Mark to be upset when he was gunned down.
Sung Tze-kit/Kit
Kit was Ho’s younger brother. When we first met him, he was a young lad. He was entering the police academy, and he was in a relationship with a ditzy girl called Jackie. I think Ho really appreciated this naïve and straightforward nature in his brother. It’s not uncommon in crime story lines for people to want their loved ones to stay on the right side of the law for their own protection and Kit was that for Ho.
Kit’s first encounter with danger was when the assassin came to kill his father. Ho’s arrest was published in the newspaper so Kit would have found out about his brother’s true occupation shortly after. In the years during Ho’s jailtime, Kit became a police officer, and we saw that he was very serious about rising through the ranks. He blamed Ho entirely for him being blocked from promotion. Honestly there were times during this arc where Kit felt a bit whiny, but I can understand that his resentment was more about Ho keeping secrets, Ho keeping secrets despite knowing Kit’s nature, and also Kit feeling upset that their father died because of Ho’s actions.
Jackie tried to mediate between Ho and Kit though it helped little. When Jackie passed on the tape from Ho to Kit, Kit realized that something was going to go down and that was why he made his way to the location, though he got caught in the action. At first, Kit was just trying to take down Shing. He was reluctant to bond with Ho when he was down, but he was moved when Mark died and that was when he and Ho finally worked together.
After the gunfight, Kit was surprised that Ho cuffed himself. Perhaps he had always assumed that his brother didn’t know right from wrong, but Ho assured him that he did, that he knew he was a criminal, and that he never wanted Kit to change. At that point, Kit understood his brother’s love for him.
Shing
Shing started as a subordinate of Ho and Mark. We saw that Mark liked to play around with him but ultimately tried to act a big brother to him. When Shing and Ho went to do business in Taiwan, they were ambushed by the police. Ho briefly suspected Shing but Shing said that if he had set it up, then he wouldn’t have come with Ho. Ho urged Shing to run and he took the fall himself.
After the time skip, Shing became the big boss and we saw that he did not treat Mark as well as Mark and Ho did him in the past. When Ho came back on Shing’s radar, he tried to recruit him, and when he refused, he threatened those close to Ho. In preparation for the exchange of the tape, Shing killed another boss who seemed to have helped him when he first rose to power, showing that Shing himself had no loyalty. In the end, he was gunned down by Ho, using Kit’s gun.
Shing wasn’t a deep character but he didn’t need to be. He was a cutthroat snake who would use any means possible to rise to the top. But he also had no sense of trust or loyalty. He only trusted himself which perhaps was reasonable when all he did was backstab and burn bridges.
Jackie
Jackie was Kit’s girlfriend. She was a clumsy woman and they argued a lot but they stayed strong. When Ho returned, Jackie noticed that Kit was becoming very aggravated. She approached Ho, asking him to leave the city, but Ho could not. So she tried to instead reconcile the relationship but of course Kit could not agree. Jackie was the bridge when Ho passed the tape to Kit.
I think Jackie was meant to be a means of communication between Ho and Kit. Even if they weren’t talking, they would be in each other’s periphery, and Jackie would be how they would hear of each other. As well, Jackie represented a side of Kit who would be more willing to listen.
Themes
Loyalty
Like many other crime-related movies of this time, loyalty was a huge theme. The loyalty between Ho and Mark was strong. They were brothers for life (though Ho referred to Mark as a friend lol), and when Ho was ambushed, Mark took revenge for him. When Ho was in jail, Mark wrote letters so he wouldn’t feel abandoned, and he tried to dress his letters up so that Ho wouldn’t worry. Their reunion was an emotional one, you could see it between them. Though Ho was reluctant to return to the world of crime, he understood Mark who felt that they had unfinished business with Shing.
Ho was also deeply loyal to Kit. It’s a bit different since they’re blood brothers, but he never blamed Kit for being upset with him. As for Kit, he was upset with Ho for going against his moral code, but underneath it all, I think he understood that his brother did what he could for him.
Shing was a snake who had no sense of loyalty. He backstabbed Ho and Mark, he also backstabbed the other man who helped him get to the top. He gained power through fear.
Morality
Kit was extremely upright. Ho and Kit’s father said that when they were kids playing cops and robbers, Kit always begged to be the cop even if he was assigned robber. He always wanted to be the good guy catching the bad guy. So it was fitting for him to be a police officer. Even if he had to arrest his own brother, he would do it, though deep down inside there was a reluctance because that was his brother.
Ho was also upright but in addition to that, he understood that he was on the wrong side of the law, and he was prepared to pay. He paid his price while serving in prison in Taiwan, and he was prepared to pay again when he went to Hong Kong, if even just for his brother.
Overall
A simple movie, but it hit on major themes that would have resonated with certain viewers.