Review of A Better Tomorrow (2010) by Damjan R — 14 Jul 2012

Knowing it been a long time since I last saw an Asian crime drama, I decided to checkout a landmark film in the genre title A Better Tomorrow. It did not disappoint and delivers everything from a good John Woo movie.

A Better Tomorrow is about brothers: one a successful counterfeiter (Lung Ti) and the younger a fledgling graduate of the HK police academy (Leslie Cheung). The plot revolves around the split when the younger brother learns the other is a criminal and the efforts of the criminal brother to reform into a normal life. The plot overall is well written capturing the struggles of the two brothers in different profession. Their relationship get most of the developments and easily the most interesting part of the plot. Though it does have some flaws, Yun-Chow Fat character seems important, but is never fully developed and only purpose is to killed people in the movie. The fast pace also works against it, sure it adds to the excitement, but it prevents the material from expanding into anything great. The casting something you don't need to worry about, whenever you got -Chow Fat and John Woo calibrating it's something good. A Better Tomorrow is a great crime drama that delivers on compelling drama and intense action.

I would've end my review here, but there's a Korean remake of the same. Moo-jeok-ja (A Better Tomorrow in Korean) is slow to start, it took some 30 minutes before the first major action sequence. To fans of A Better Tomorrow there's nothing here that will surprise you anyway, except to raise an eyebrow or two when motivations and subplots deviate. And if there's one more element that this film sorely lacked, it's the very, very iconic theme tune that accompanied the Hong Kong original. This one pales in comparison and somehow turned out dull for the most parts. It's simply to similar to the original and is not recommended for fans of the original. Considering I couldn't find the Korean remake in the RT database, I'll give it a 30% for failing to separate itself from the original source material and a bad choice of casting.

A Better Tomorrow is a great crime drama from John Woo and one of his works no doubt. This is definitely worth checking out for fans of John Woo or the genre. As for the Korean, Moo-jeok-ja, should be avoided since it's more of the same with a lack of new ideas.