A Better Tomorrow (1986) Dir. John Woo

My knowledge of 80s Hong Kong action films couldn't be further from Tarantino so I was excited to delve into A Better Tomorrow - a John Woo actioner - especially given the fact I'm a novice to the genre.

Growing up in the 1980s I certainly watched my fare share of (American) action crime thrilllers and by the 90s had delved into director John Woo's (somewhat questionnable) Hollywood fare such as the excellent Face/Off and the misjudged Mission: Impossible sequel.

What we have here though is a film which sits bang in the middle of Woo's 50(!)-year directorial career. It follows a Triad member (Ti Lung as Ho) who deals in counterfeit money and his brother (Leslie Cheung as Kit) a trainee policeman. After Ho vows to go straight after one final deal, he is betrayed and ends up in prison. Ho's friend Mark (Chow Yun-fat) tries to enact revenge but is injured and we jump three years forward to Ho's release.

With double-crossing Triad boss Shing now in place, Kit has become a fully fledged policeman and with the brothers' father dead, the film delivers scenes of revenge, loyalty and trust. It also includes an (over)abundance of extraneous characters which frankly, makes the whole thing far more confusing than it needs to be.

In short though, the brothers are on two opposing side of the law and a battle for their soul takes place amongst the corruption and lawlessness of the underworld. This may sound harsh but it's quite a lot of blokes getting overly-emotional about nothing in particular.

Away from the convulted plot, the film shows the early signs of Woo's famous "gun-fu" with a host of excellently choreographed shootouts with old-school blood squib splatter and plenty of (appropriate) slow-motion. Tom Cruise's hair-flowing bicycle kick this isn't!

The grimy 80s film stock is always a pleasure to my eyes and the story moves as quickly as the action scenes. However one of the best attributes is its eclectic score. It's one that swings uncontrollably between synth and orchestral strings, before moving into rock, melodramatic funk and even harmonica pieces. It's consistently intriguing even if many other aspects of the movie vary wildly in quality.

It definitely has a "cool"ness about it though. The sunglasses and trenchcoats were apparently popular in Hong Kong after the film's release and it was a sterling success in its home territory at the time. A HK$11 million budget led to an impressive HK$34.7 million box office. Not bad.

As the film wraps up its various strands - to be honest I wasn't really bothered about any of them - it's all done and dusted in a swift 90 minutes, which is the perfect length for this type of forgettable fluff. Personally I thought it could have done with a bit more action. Maybe I've become accustomed to modern techniques but, to be fair to the film, it invented those types of techniques before pacing and editing sped up over time.

A Better Tomorrow then is hardly a truly cinematic masterpiece. Sorry. But it does mark an important turning point for Asian cinema and its early influential steps on Hollywood. And it's certainly an easily digestible noir introduction into Woo's world of violence, action and moral transgressions. And with a sequel and prequel following the film's success, there's even more to invest in if you enjoyed its retro stylised charms.

★★★

3 / 5

Michael Sales

Instagram / Facebook / X @midlandsmovies

A 4K restoration of A Better Tomorrow is screening at Nottingham Broadway starting June 26, 2026, followed by a run at Derby QUAD starting July 3, 2026.