A Better Tomorrow II
Synopsis
A restaurant owner his ex-con brother and a policeman team up to avenge the murder of his old friends daughter by the Triad.
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I feel so sorry with my rice
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"Apologize to the rice right now!"
"Fuck your rice! And fuck you too!"
This movie is nowhere near as good as the original, but it's so damn enjoyable for so many reasons that I couldn't help but love it. The absurd over the top nature of it reminds me of films like Rome Armed to the Teeth and other crime films Umberto Lenzi did in the 70s. There's absolutely no focus whatsoever in this movie, and every second scene seems to exist in order to make the audience pay attention.
I would love to see the 3 hours cut of this film as this shortened edit really hurts what Woo was going for. The story is that originally Hark edited…
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The story and the film as a whole are not as good as the first movie, but there are parts in this sequel that are border line brilliant and awesome. One of the first things I will never forget is Chow Yun-Fat mocking a "mafioso" in New York by going into a full on Robert De Niro impression... in English!
I read that John Woo and the producer (Hark Tsui) couldn't agree during the movie about which direction the story should take, and it clearly shows. The story is missing the focus the first one had, but the ending of the movie makes up for it. The final action set piece is epic and better then anything that was in the first movie.
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just an epic showdown scene in the end! bodycount of over 200 and the mandatory "john woo dual guns unlimited ammo effect"!
Recent reviews
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"Apologize to the rice right now!"
"Fuck your rice! And fuck you too!"
This movie is nowhere near as good as the original, but it's so damn enjoyable for so many reasons that I couldn't help but love it. The absurd over the top nature of it reminds me of films like Rome Armed to the Teeth and other crime films Umberto Lenzi did in the 70s. There's absolutely no focus whatsoever in this movie, and every second scene seems to exist in order to make the audience pay attention.
I would love to see the 3 hours cut of this film as this shortened edit really hurts what Woo was going for. The story is that originally Hark edited…
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The final siege can be argued as the greatest moment in action cinema of the last 30 years. And Chow Yun Fat is the coolest motherfucker around.
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John Woo's least favorite HK movie (He has said it in numerous occasion), and obvious cash grab from the first movie (bringing back Chow Yun Fat to play Mark's twin brother is pretty blatant). Though it also produced one of the coolest and bloodiest shoot out in movie history. The one shootout that made Chow Yun Fat an international movie star and one of the coolest man ever. Also one of the early films that spurred the HK Mafia films movement during the late 80s to early 90s.
I can't quite get passed the hooky revenge plot this time around. And while the violence didn't bother me, it's certainly excessive and gratuitous. I will give John Woo credit for one thing: He made it impossible for anyone to make another sequel out of this (though Tsui Hark made a prequel 2 years later with Chow Yun Fat).
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This film contains the worst and best of Woo. The story is confusing, falls enough times in the ridiculous, especially trying to load the drama, the music is cheesy and often tiresome. But anyone would sell his grandmother to make action sequences like him.
The final round is superb.
It's cool how Woo honors many American films about crime here and a few years after the road is the opposite.
I love the spanish title for this one : Honor, lead and blood -
"I'll come back to have soup"
Spare a thought for the only white stuntman in this movie. I've just watched the same poor bugger get shot to pieces at least 8 times. To add insult to injury, his car explodes so hard that the hatch on his hatchback flies about 80ft in the air! I do hope he's insured.
Q: What do you do when you kill off the outright favourite character from the first film?
A: You bring his identical twin brother into the sequel of course!The plot is like something out of a soap. Although I'd say it's less "melodrama" and more "mellow drama" (shut up... it sounded good in my head, ok)!
The scene with the… -
Enoyable stuff, some pretty great action sequences again by Mr. Woo, but I just don't like how he puts together the story. There is no flow from scene to scene, and it feels rather jumpy. That said, I was entertained for large amounts of this film. Chow Yun-Fat really comes to form as the twin-brother of the character he played in the first one. The final shootout is immense, and it feels like where in the first one Woo was more keen on balancing character development and relationships with action, he in this one goes all out on the action, making it slightly more entertaining, but lacking in weight.
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Chow Yun Fat is resurrected in the form of his previous character's twin brother for this sequel. Pretty much a rehash of the first but still thoroughly enjoyable stuff.
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just an epic showdown scene in the end! bodycount of over 200 and the mandatory "john woo dual guns unlimited ammo effect"!
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The story and the film as a whole are not as good as the first movie, but there are parts in this sequel that are border line brilliant and awesome. One of the first things I will never forget is Chow Yun-Fat mocking a "mafioso" in New York by going into a full on Robert De Niro impression... in English!
I read that John Woo and the producer (Hark Tsui) couldn't agree during the movie about which direction the story should take, and it clearly shows. The story is missing the focus the first one had, but the ending of the movie makes up for it. The final action set piece is epic and better then anything that was in the first movie.