fludd.org - Movie Review

In this sequel of the memorable movie A Better Tomorrow, we can clearly see that producer Tsui Hark really tried to control the filming of this movie starring Chow Yun-Fat, Ti Lung and Leslie Leung. As a result of that, John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow 2 tries to apply more or less the same formula that gave the phenomenal success to its predecessor. Unfortunately, the second instalment of this series doesn’t manage to remind us about how good A Better Tomorrow was. In short, once you watch this movie, it’s better that you just forget it.

One of the biggest flaw of A Better Tomorrow 2 is actually the low-energy performance delivered by the members of the cast. In fact, while A Better Tomorrow was able to develop the various characters through their bonds, the second instalment of this series directed by John Woo can’t even show the real psychological depth of the characters. This can rather be explained by the annoying absence of themes in A Better Tomorrow 2 such as brotherhood and honour. In short, the low-energy performance is not due to the incompetence of the members of the cast, but rather to their lack of margin of manoeuvre.

As Ken, Chow Yun-Fat (Hong Kong 1941) still occupies a supporting role. Despite his visible efforts, Chow Yun-Fat’s quite ordinary performance doesn’t even save the movie from a small catastrophe. In fact, during all the time the movie plays, all we see is rather a series of emotive interpretation that either don’t necessarily differ that much from one scene to another or don’t convince us that much. Obviously, I’m aware that Chow Yun-Fat is one of the best actors that all Asia (and even the world).

Nonetheless, his performance really lacks nuances and variation of intensity. The same remark also applies for the rest of the cast whether it is Leslie Cheung (A Better Tomorrow), as Kit, or Ti Lung (A Better Tomorrow), as Ho. In short, even though most actors in A Better Tomorrow 2 tries to emote correctly, they often made me laugh. Hopefully, if you watch this ordinary (and maybe forgettable) movie directed by John Woo for the action scenes, you can expect the actors to be up to the challenge.

Maybe because of a bigger budget, movie director John Woo (A Better Tomorrow) succeeded into astonishing us with the action scenes. While watching the gunfight scenes, we still don’t see the heavy stylistics that has made the reputation of creativity and originality from John Woo because this is the second gunfight movie that he directed. However, as opposed to the action scenes in the first movie, the ones in A Better Tomorrow are certainly not more realistic, but they’re evidently more violent, brutal and quick. All in all, you should really get prepared before you watch the action scenes, because there’s so much blood in the gunfight scenes.

In spite of its potential, A Better Tomorrow 2, as the second gunfight movie of John Woo, definitely fails to meet enthusiastic of Hong Kong gunfight movies mainly because of the poor performance delivered by the cast. Even though the movie did pass in terms of rating, it doesn’t necessarily reflect the lack of quality from the script. As a matter of fact, viewers are stuck with a storyline that piles up a series of incoherent situations and afterwards, it attempts to look good by trying to get to plot’s main point in a way that doesn’t look natural.

Honestly, the movie didn’t impress me as much as the first instalment of the series. Hopefully, as the title of the movie probably implied, John Woo will know better days mainly because he dissociated himself from Chinese producer Tsui Hark (A Better Tomorrow) who has a very Americanized vision of cinema. Woo’s best movie up to date is still The Killer (another collaboration with Chow Yun-Fat), which is considered as a worldwide cult movie and also a reference for action movie lovers.

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