Ying xiong ben se 2018

'A BETTER TOMORROW 2018': Four Stars (Out of Five)

A loose remake of John Woo's classic 1986 action crime-drama. It deals with the tale of a former drug smuggler, fresh out of prison, that tries to start a new crime-free life, and patch things up with his estranged brother, who's also a rising police star in the narcotics division. The film stars Wang Kai, Ma Tianyu, Darren Wang and Li Mincheng. It was written and directed by Ding Sheng. I found parts of it to be really slow-paced, and overly melodramatic, but the action scenes are really well done.

The story deals with two brothers, one's a rising narcotics police officer and the others a drug smuggler. When the drug smuggler is busted by his brother, and their ill father passes away, the police officer vows never to forgive his drug dealing brother. When the criminal gets out of prison though, he vows to start a new crime-free life, and to try to patch things up with his brother. Other dangerous criminals cause more problems for the siblings though. I saw the original movie a couple of decades ago, so I don't remember that much about it, but I do remember it being really melodramatic and cheesy. So it's no surprise to me that this remake is the same way. Like the original though, the action scenes are spectacular. They're definitely not as impressive as a John Woo movie, back in the day, but I'd say they're worth seeing the movie for (at least once).

So, I'm going to start by saying that this movie is an homage to the 1986's movie A Better Tomorrow. The story goes around two brothers and a friend, in opposite sides of the law, and the ups and downs in their lives.

1986 is one of my all-time favourites, in 2010 there was a korean remake of this movie, very competent as well. This one hasn't got the finesse of Woo's shootouts - that why he is one of the most famous action director in asian/american cinema - and hasn't the "deepness" of the story in the korean version - usually the koreans try to build a solid story, and by doing so, they build characters, as well - but this is really a very good movie. The story is straight forward, the pacing is very nice, there's a lot of action scenes, here, more direct and simple...

So, eventhough there's no way this can match to the original, is, still, one hell of a joy ride.

What made me feel uncomfortable again about this Chinese movie was the ridiculous script about putting the Chinese police force to carry out missions on foreign soil. We know that the Chinese communist government has something similar to American's FBI and DEA, issuing some kinda "Red Warrant" to catch some Chinese criminals abroad and bring them back to China. But such warrant has not sanctioned or legalized by almost every foreign governments, so it'd carry out under the radar of the foreign authorities.

But what we saw at the very beginning in this film was not what it should be or shouldn't be. A bunch of Chinese plain-cloth detectives, most of them were too young to be convinced easily qualified as detectives, they openly used firepower trying to catch some dubious Chinese criminals in an European city, looked more like in Italy since all the roofs were red-clay tiles.

Then when the camera lens shifted, we saw the Chinese smugglers trying to do business in Japan. We saw a very bad Taiwanese actor acting like an annoying clown, a sidekick to a cool Chinese veteran smuggler.

At that moment, the usual formulaic Chinese movie production had become so obvious, readily kicked in again: The Chinese screenplays, no matter what, doing good or doing bad, got to be in foreign countries, on foreign soil. Well, I'm just so tired of this kinda unrealistic phony Chinese movies.

They seriously just remade the plot and every scene, with bad actors and stupid fights scenes.. This is just like those cheap hollywood remakes.

Just like how the original movie turned out to highlight the best of Chow Yun Fat's acting as Mark, the same goes for this 2018 version in which Darren Wang's acting as Ma Ke was a show stealer. I watched the original movie super long time ago so hard to be making much comparisons although I did notice certain differences on how the story plot being played out despite maintaining the definitive themes on friendship, brotherhood and crime gang. The action scenes were so-so in my opinion (the legendary shooting scenes by John Woo were classic memorables) but it did try to showcase its own flair when Ma Ke went solo to the Japanese triad. As such I feel this movie relies more on the casts' actings, from the main characters to the special guesting including the short scenes with Eric Tsang while in the prison. True enough, for me the chemistry between Wang Kai and Darren Wang was superb as they interacted throughout the movie. Although there were still that few moments I could not help but to feel if only they added in more of the "oomph" on brotherlihood with proper build up instead of just glazing over some difficulties faced by Zhou Kai in his failed attempts to rebuild his life the proper way as stepping stone to reconnect with Ma Ke again. I did not feel an equivalent level of chemistry between Wang Kai and Ma Tian Yu despite recalling this movie's key point is on these two brothers and how the blames, shames and guilts threatened their kinship. Nonetheless it was enjoyable still and definitely worth watching. I'd rewatch for the good 'ol feeling. And intermittently throughout the movie, you get to be reminded of/reminisced on the original OST sung by the late Leslie Cheung.