alexk-ronning Review of A Better Tomorrow II

A Better Tomorrow II (1987)

The change in style is too dramatic to be a truly impressive sequel.

[7/10 · 16 May 2011]

The original A Better Tomorrow is one of my all time favorite films. The sequel, not so much. The serious change in style really hurts this muddled sequel. The main focus of the film seems to be undecided, obviously it should have been on our two lead brothers in the first film, Kit and Ho. But they seem to take a back seat to newbie Dean Shek, and the returning Chow Yun-Fat. SPOILER ALERT Now wait a minute... didn't Chow Yun-Fat's character die at the end of the original A Better Tomorrow? The character of Mark Gor was definitely dead at the end of the original, so Chow Yun-Fat returns to play his twin brother! That makes perfect sense, but it would have been better if there was any mention of him in the original movie. Instead, it feels like Chow Yun-Fat was just shoe horned in to meet popular demand. Our new character Ken is cool, although he is quite different to his brother. He more resembles Tequila, the character Mr Chow played in Hard Boiled, both physically, and in the way he acts. Apart from the lack of focus, A Better Tomorrow II is just too silly to properly be compared to its predecessor. Dean Shek's character seems to be able to casually drift in and out of sanity, and with Chow Yun-Fat yelling at him and throwing food all over the place it's hardly going to help him come back to health. This was actually one of those scenes that was so bad it was good. There are various other things that don't make sense, the majority of them being when Dean Shek's character went insane, which just shouldn't have happened in the first place. Now I watch A lot of action movies, and I always love a good stupid movie. But this is the last thing A Better Tomorrow should be, and so it left me disappointed. Still, the film has it's high points. Why else would I have given it a 7? The ridiculous "eat the rice!" scene is hilarious and memorable. The action is a huge improvement over the first movie, the ending action scene is one of the best of John Woo's entire career. Every action scene here is standard Woo, and then some, so they definitely get the job done. The movies drama isn't all bad, the story is pretty interesting (for this kind of movie). Still, in these areas, the sequel isn't a shadow of the original movie. The acting is all relatively good, not really any complaints (except when Dean Shek went insane). All in all, A Better Tomorrow II is a good movie, but it's lack of focus and serious change in style really hold it back, along with its silliness. It's widely known that there was a lot of behind the scenes squabbling that went on between Woo and producer Tsui Hark. And I can't help wonder, if Woo had just been left to make the movie we wanted, what kind of sequel would we have gotten?