Review of Better Tomorrow, A

Introduction

John Woo`s Hardboiled is unquestionably the movie that sparked huge interest in Hong Kong cinema in the West, making it one of the most popular movie genres. The quality and intensity of the movie resulted in a surge in demand for other John Woo and Chow Yun Fat movies, especially where the now famous director directed the charismatic star. Aside from The Killer, A Better Tomorrow and its sequel, A Better Tomorrow II are perhaps the most well known movies that the pair have made.

Yun Fat plays Mark, a highly respected gangster called Mark, whose partner Ho starts having doubts about his career when his younger brother Kit qualifies as a Police Inspector. Ho is double-crossed and his father killed, and Mark swears vengeance, however his leg is badly injured in a spectacular shoot-out, and he is relegated to washing cars. When Ho is released, he teams up with Ho and Kit and the three face their destiny.

Video

The video is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and is particularly disappointing, in truth being little better than a VHS print, with very little detail, poor focus and plenty of dirt and grain. The image has poor contrast and looks washed out, with weak colours and the blacks are distinctly grey.

As far as the visuals go, they are fairly mundane aside from the choreographed gunfights, which although good are pretty tame by today`s standard ? impressive as they were in the eighties, the rest of the world has caught up, and this, compared with the poor picture makes the movie disappointing.

Audio

The soundtrack is presented in a choice of Dolby Digital 2.0 in Cantonese or English, I detest dubbed soundtracks, so stuck with the original language. Obviously I can`t understand Cantonese, but the dialogue seemed clear. The sound effects suffer from a generally low fidelity sound that isn`t particularly impressive.

Features

The second disc contains the extras, which include a ten minute featurette, interviews with John Woo, Chow Yun Fat and Ti Lung, biographies, trailers and a still gallery.

The featurette is in the usual promotional style, featuring interview clips inserted into an extended trailer, along with other footage ? not particularly exciting.

The interviews are much better, split into three sections for Woo, Fat and Lung and running for eighteen, ten and two minutes respectively, which each one quite interesting and well worth watching. There is a also a text interview with John Woo.

Both the original Hong Kong and International trailers are also included.

Conclusion

When I first saw A Better Tomorrow, shortly after I had first experienced Hardboiled, I enjoyed it, however it has not aged very well, and isn`t really worth getting too excited about now. The gunfights are not bad, but have been surpassed by many movies, and at times the film is slow and uninteresting. Combined with the poor picture quality and mundane sound, the film doesn`t have much to offer the world in 2003.

This two-disc set contains various extras, and whilst the featurette is quite dull, the interviews are quite interesting.

Overall, the poor presentation of the movie makes the package difficult to recommend, but given the age/original of the film, it is unlikely that we`ll ever see a good print with decent sound.