I’ve been curious about this since I had a chance to watch the film. It’s a 1986 John Woo joint starring Chow Yun-Fat and Ti Lung, action/crime drama, fun performances from the cast, lots of gun play, and a body count in the thousands (as one would expect from John Woo).
I got the basic plot and understood the motives for the characters, believed why they made the choices they made, etc. and overall enjoyed the film. However, upon further inspection of the film’s wiki page, apparently it was a monster, huge, crazy mega-blockbuster for its time in Hong Kong and throughout Asian cinema. Of the Hong Kong Film Awards “Top 100 Chinese Films”, A Better Tomorrow is ranked #2.
Why? Clearly, the film struck a vital cord of Hong Kong and Asian audiences. Were there certain social situations, or current events that played to its popularity? It can’t just be because the Chinese love a good Triad movie. The film hit a nerve, clearly, I think, but as a foreigner I don’t have the background to define the secret to its success. Anyone have any guesses?
I actually like the sequel a lot better. The first one is a simple crime drama but the sequel has some of the great action sequences that Woo has become known for. Of course the action is at the expense of the drama…
As for why the first one is so popular, I can’t say. It was a decent enough mobster film but not something I’d call among the greatest of all time.
I’d venture to guess that they’re combining 1 & 2, which inflates its rank similarly to how people might think of LoTR as a sum total greater than its parts.
Personally I like The Killer best of John Woo films.
It was the first triad movie – in fact, the first “bullet ballet” movie that I’m aware of. Previously, Hong Kong cinema had relied on kung fu, stunts, and comedy combined with melodramatic elements and/or history- or legend-based plots. While Jackie Chan and his ilk had been using modern settings and ever-bigger stuntwork, A Better Tomorrow combined gritty realism, style, and emotional drama in a new way, and added the now-famous slow-motion gunplay. The melodrama/action combo was popular in some kung fu movies in the '70s, and has strong cultural resonance in Asia. Put together these elements in the hands of a veteran director like Woo, and…well…! The movie also created controversy, drawing accusations of glorifying the triads, which never hurts at the box office.
I tried thinking of other, Western, action films that were A Better Tomorrow’s contemporaries, and a lot that I can think of was either big budget (Predator), or sci-fi stuff (Terminator, and I guess Predator, too). I liked the sequel as well, but I liked the first film more because the story definitely was more sense-making, and risk-taking in terms of character deaths and the like.
The relationship between the first and second films reminded me a lot of Death Wish compared to its sequels: the first Death Wish was modern film noir, and I’m sure put to film many fantasies of its audience in 1970’s, crime-ridden big cities. Death Wish II on up were ridiculous over-the-top gun-fests that captured none of the grittiness of the original. A Better Tomorrow III was just junk, imo.
I liked The Killer as well, but that film was very much a downer. On first blush, I immediately didn’t really like the ending. But within minutes of the ending credits, I respected and understood why the narrative took the direction it did. I also liked how (in many John Woo gun-play films) The Killer seemed to take inspiration from the wu xia kung fu classics like The One-Armed Swordsman in their (almost) invincible protagonists: near the final confrontation in The Killer, when you see all the Triads streaming out of their cars ready to shoot Chow Yun-Fat to death, you pretty much know as an audience member that all those Triads are going to die, some how.