Ying hung boon sik
Tags: comedy, cruelty, murder, violence, cult, flashback, tragedy, revenge, sadist

Plot synopsis:
Sung Tse-Ho (Ti Lung) works for the Triad, whose principal operation is printing and distributing counterfeit US bank notes. Ho is a respected member of the organization and is entrusted the most important transactions. Mark Lee (Chow Yun-Fat), another high-ranking member of the group, is his best friend and partner in crime.
Ho is close to his younger brother, Kit (Leslie Cheung), who is training to become a police officer. Ho keeps his criminal life secret from his brother and encourages Kit's career choice. Ho's father is aware of Ho's criminal activities and appeals to him to go straight. Ho agrees, deciding that his next deal in Taiwan will be his last one before leaving the Triad. Shing (Waise Lee), a new member, is sent along as an apprentice. The deal turns out to be a trap by the Taiwanese gang. A shootout ensues in which Ho and Shing flee, pursued by local law enforcement.
Meanwhile, a gang member attempts to kidnap Ho's father to ensure Ho's silence if he is caught by police; in the ensuing fight also involving Kit and his girlfriend, Ho's father is killed. Just before dying, he pleads with Kit to forgive his brother. Ho eventually surrenders to the police in order to buy time for Shing to escape. After learning of Ho's capture, Mark finds and kills the Taiwanese gang leader and his bodyguards. However, Mark's leg is shot in the gunfight, leaving him crippled.
Ho is released from prison three years later. Remorseful and determined to start a new life, he finds work as a driver for a taxi company, run by another ex-con. Ho spots Mark during one of his shifts; in contrast to Mark's letters, he realizes that Mark has been reduced to an errand boy for Shing (who is the new leader of the Triad). During an emotional reunion, Mark asks Ho to take revenge on Shing and reclaim their positions in the organization, but Ho refuses.
Ho seeks Kit out and attempts to reconcile with his brother (who is now a police officer), but is disowned by Kit, who sees Ho as a criminal who is responsible for their father's death. Additionally, Kit is resentful that his familial tie to Ho is preventing him from advancement in the department. In an effort to prove himself to his superiors and further distance himself from his brother's criminal past, Kit becomes obsessed with bringing down Shing's criminal group, despite Ho's warnings to stay away from the dangerous case.
Shing finds Ho and presses him to come back to his organization, offering to reinstate Mark if he returns. Ho flatly refuses. Consequently, Shing begins harassing Ho in order to get him to return, including luring Kit into a trap and injuring Kit, attacking Ho's co-workers, and having Mark beaten severely. Ho is dismayed but is still hesitant to take action, but an impassioned speech by Mark finally convinces Ho to join Mark in taking revenge on Shing.
Mark steals a computer tape containing printing plate data from the counterfeiting business and wins a shootout with gang members, with Ho arriving to aid Mark's escape. The film then reveals that it was Shing who betrayed Ho three years ago in Taiwan. Ho and Mark use the tape to ransom Shing in exchange for money and an escape boat. However, Ho ensures that the tape is passed to Kit to hand to the police. Using Shing as a hostage, Ho and Mark take the money to a pier, where Shing's men await. There, Ho persuades Mark to escape by himself in the boat.
After Mark leaves, Kit arrives on the scene intending to make an arrest where he is captured by Shing's men. A deal is made to exchange Shing with Kit, but the trade explodes into a wild shootout. Ho and Kit are wounded, but Mark returns with guns blazing out of loyalty to Ho. After Ho, Kit and Mark kill many of Shing's men, Mark berates Kit, telling him that Ho's actions had atoned for whatever wrongdoings he had done in the past. Mark is in turn killed by Shing.
As the police approach, Shing mocks Ho (who has run out of ammunition), stating that he will surrender, but his money and power will ensure his swift release. Kit, finally seeing eye to eye with his brother, hands Ho a revolver, with which Ho kills Shing. Immediately afterwards, Ho handcuffs himself to Kit, expressing his desire for redemption and his admiration that Kit always walked the right path. The film ends with the reconciled brothers walking together towards the gathered crowd of police.

Review: With the police and mob closing in Ho, Mark and Kit are forced to take a stand.As part of my build up to see Bullet Proof Monk I have been watching some of Mr Chow's HK action movies again  just to remind me how good an actor he is when he is used well.
A Better Tomorrow was Chow's big break through from television to movies and also the film that kick started John Woo's career after a couple of commercial failures.
The relationship between two brothers on opposite sides of the law, and the loyalty of friends is explored in `A Better Tomorrow,' an action/drama directed by John Woo.
In Hong Kong, the gangsters Sung Tse-Ho (Ti Lung) and Mark (Chow Yun Fat) are best friends.
"A Better Tomorrow", is a great crime film directed by John Woo. The good storyline about brotherhood, friendship and loyalty is full of action.
The Cool & Suave Chow Yun Fat. John Woo's Ying Huang Boon Sik/A Better Tomorrow(1986) was groundbreaking when first released because of the stylisitc depiction of the action scenes.
A Better Tomorrow(1986) made John Woo an action guru after years doing comedies and being known as the king of comedy in Hong Kong cinema..
The very fruitful partnership between John Woo and Chow Yun Fat, the successful career for of them, the heroic bloodshed movie (don't try this at home or let kids watch them) and a lot of imitators!
Three years later, Ho gets out of prison and starts a new life that is crime-free, but his brother is unable to forgive him (in other words, hates him) and his friend Mark (Chow Yun-Fat), encourages him to go back to the world of crime.
But the film is not really a action film as this film is less action-like and more dramatic than most John woo films.As it focuses on two brothers and a young man on the verge on finding a better life.The film has great memorable likable characters, Powerful acting, a great pacing and a Soundtrack that has you tuning for days.The film is about a gangster name Ho who is trying to escape his gangster life to protect and lookout for his younger brother Kit. Kit is a up-incoming police officer who has no idea what his brother does for a career.Ho is given a assignment to go to Taiwan for a deal but is set-up by his driver Shing and Ho is arrested and sent to prison.
Because half of the film is Kit and Ho trying to accept each other and also Mark's Struggle to come back to his old gangster life and prove he's more than just a gangster than knows how to use two guns.but this drama is far from boring making these characters real and believable as well.As for character development it's on top form.We learn that Ho is a wise, caring man who is looking out for his brother from danger.but goes though a lot because he has chosen to leave the criminal life and lookout for his brother and Mark making him a likable character.Kit is a first a care-free person but when he finds about his brother he becomes a troubled character with a lot of angered inside him and cannot forgive his brother at all for what he has done.Mark is the most likable character in the film from being a Dynamic, fun-free, smooth character in the beginning to a Man trying to become man looking for a better life as well.Thanks to the characters, the acting is in top-shape.Ti Lung gives well performance as Ho as he makes his character believable and bring a level of emotion as well pulling off amount of range.Leslie Chung is great as Kit.as he plays the naive, bitter character well making him into somewhat of a spoiled brat.But when all said and done, Chow-Yun Fat steals the show as Mark.He fits into his role well as the comical Mark and enjoys playing his character despite the fact in the beginning of the film he plays the role a bit over-the-top.But it's his climax performance that steals the show.making you want to crying in his dramatic sense when he tells Ho he wants to be a better man.Overall this is great movie you will enjoy it I'm telling you You will..
As much as Woo fans would like to hype "A Better Tomorrow" as a classic, it is just another Hong Kong crime/action flick with all the usual overdone bullets, blood, and silly melodrama.
The only other film that John Woo managed to successfully marry both style and substance is Face/Off and A Better Tomorrow.A Better Tomorrow manages to tell a somewhat heartfelt story of a former gangster trying to reform his ways but finds out that out past always somehow manages to creep up on us.The screenplay and direction is good even though the pacing is a little slow.
Chow Yun Fat plays Mark, respected member of a major counterfeiting syndicate and best friend of fellow criminal Ho (TI Lung), whose brother Kit (Leslie Cheung) works on the opposite side of the law as a cop.
Unfortunately, syndicate boss Shing isn't about to let Ho go, which leads to Ho and Mark having to take drastic action.The Killer was the film that brought John Woo and Chow Yun Fat to the attention of an international audience, but it was this film, made three years earlier, that saw them score their first hit together with a home crowd, making them both major league players in HK cinema.
This movie contains what is probably Hong Kong actor Chow Yun-Fat's signature role, Mark Gor. He plays a triad member who teams up with gangster Sung Tse-Ho (Lung Ti) in running a counterfeiting ring.
The awesome Ti Lung (I find) doesn't usually receive the same amount of credit for his role, yet plays his part flawlessly, delivering beautiful action to lump-in-the-throat drama, as he carries the story between his best friend (Mark) and his brother, played by the late, Leslie Cheung.At first, I wasn't too keen on Leslie Cheung as Kit – but after warming to him in other movies, and repeated viewings of ABT you soon see that Woo and Hark made the right choice in putting these 3 together on- screen.
The action scenes are among the best and like its sequels and films The Killer and Hard Boiled show you, Chow Yun-Fat And director John Woo are the best action film combo ever!The one thing i enjoyed about the action scenes is that it seems more real than just about anything Hollywood has made in the last 25 years.
After watching two of John Woo's action flicks (Hard-Boiled & The Killer) I decided to check out another one of his classics 'A Better Tomorrow'.
And while I wasn't a fan of its fewer action sequences ad slower paced style, at first, after re watching the film I think its probably Woo's best.I think the reason I disliked at first was the fact I was expecting a huge over the top actioners like Hard-Boiled and The Killer.
Chow Yun-Fat's trademark trench coat, sunglasses and match stick in the mouth increases the appeal of the film.The action scenes, though not at their peak(As said above) are some of the best around at the time of the film's release and are just as cool as ever.
I had heard so much about Better Tomorrow.I finally got around to watching it.This first film marks Chow Yun Fat's most famous debut and also started the partnership between him and director John Woo, they would later make classics such as Hard Boiled and The Killer together.Chow isn't really the main character in this film, but he does have a good role.The film is about a gangster who wants his brother to join the police force and not follow in his footsteps.His brother does not know of his gangster ways.After their father dies, the brother blames him.The man quits the traids and starts working as a mechanic, however their old friends want him back.Chow Yun Fat plays the brother's friend who helps him out.Overall, while not as good as Woo's later films, it is still a fairly good action/drama that is worth watching..
Woo delivers the fascinating, sometimes sad tale of two brothers on different sides of the law with all imaginable beauty in its story, and all imaginable adrenaline, blood and brutality in its violence.Ho (Lung Ti), a former gangster who has just come out of prison, tries to start a new life and reconcile with his younger brother Kit (Leslie Cheung).
Kit, however, is a young police detective, and having an ex-con brother gives him a hard time in his job, for which he hates Ho. Ho is torn between the love to his younger brother, and the loyalty to his best friend and former partner in crime, Mark (Chow Yun-Fat), who has become more and more run-down since having been shot in the leg...
A better tomorrow is incredible and one of my all time favourites, not just because of its amazing violence and cool gun play but because of Woo's genius directing, the friendship and brotherhood which i think makes the characters like Mark lee (Chow Yun fat) and Kit (Leslie Cheung) so likable.
This is the movie that started it all, the genre of "heroic bloodshed", and the careers of actor Chow Yun-Fat and director John Woo.>Chow Yun-Fat is just original as Mark Lee (better known to people as "Mark-Gor" Gor is brother ie.
John Woo started his career as a kung fu director,he then moved to comedy,where he also excelled, he was running out've gas when a well known producer Tsui Hark noticed his project "Three Colors Of A Heroe", Hark was intrigued,and agreed to produce it, gun fights weren't prevalent before this,because the HK audiences saw it as a skill that couldn't be improved,like martial arts or swords, John Woo showed them otherwise with this,Chow Yun Fat and Ti Lung really shine in this movie, before this,Chow, a tv actor was viewed as not cashable,and Ti, a washed up Wu Shu star,needed a new start,Leslie Cheung provided the confidence that theatre owners needed,after the movie broke all HK records in 86,all doubts were shredded,and John Woo and Chow Yun Fat were instant stars,Chow's infamous restaurant assassination scene, which was beautifully shot,is probobly the vision most ABT watchers remembered,after that,every young man in HK could be seen in a long coat and sunglasses like the ones Chow used,it also started the era of Heroic Bloodshed,that lasts even today,only John Woo could do it right, American directors tried to imitate it (Tarantino),but no one could do it like Woo.This movie spawned two sequels,and this was definitely the best,many consider "The Killer" John Woo's masterpiece,but this one was the original,the trendsetter,the best.
"A Better Tomorrow" not only kick-started the careers of John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat, but ti also started the whole immensely popular heroic bloodshed genre.
It is indeed Woo who makes the movie what it is; his trade-marks of love, brotherhood, honour, and betrayal are all here, and so are his camera trademarks, although they're not as refined as they will be later in "The Killer".Although he doesn't take the lead role in "A Better Tomorrow", Chow Yun-Fat does take all the limelight.
What can be better than a John Woo film with Chow Yun-Fat?
If you can get by the annoying dub acting you'll fing a great movie you're jaw will drop at the amazing action scenes, you'll laugh at the witty lines of Chow Yun Fat (Replacement Killers), and you'll cry at the saddening results of the tensions of a family divided by mob ties and cops.
This is truly the mother of all action films, not only for starting a whole new genre of gun-fighting action, but also because it has a great storyline told with an economical approach that will keep you glued to the screen until the very end.With "A Better Tommorow" in 1986, John Woo and the incredible Chow Yun-Fat established themselves as true geniuses.
I love action films, including John Woo. But the VHS version of "A Better Tomorrow" I watched was muddy and the dubbing into English just left me confused.
It is difficult to describe now just what a zeitgeist-making movie this really was: it catapulted not only the director Woo and the leading man Chow to superstardom, but helped put Leslie Cheung over the top in the film business with a hitherto rare serious role and that song.As a concentrated concoction of melodramatic violence, it doesn't quite measure up to 'The Killer', and lacks the balletic geometry of 'Hard Boiled', but the doomed camaraderie of Chow and his crew, reminiscent of the classic westerns or perhaps 'Seven Samurai', and the surprisingly sensitive treatment of wounded machismo, set 'Tomorrow' apart from subsequent Hong Kong actioners.
Chow looks so effortlessly cool that it is with aching regret that you watch his Hollywood disasters (Tinseltown tended to treat his character as a sort of Freeman-lite sage, protégé in tow, whereas Chow was always at his best as a quietly smouldering loner); Cheung, already a star, became a legitimate Asian icon; and Woo, for whom 'Tomorrow' was the first real success and would incontestably go on to make more complete movies, hasn't quite yet managed to dress so well the sorrow of men's failed dreams with such stylish violence again.It is remarkable to compare Hong Kong's approach to destructive masculinity in action movies with the contemporary sturm-und-drang of Schwarzenegger-era Hollywood: while the latter concentrated on biceps the size of the Alps and explosions of increasingly tectonic severity, Woo helped create a seminal style of graceful, tightly defined slow-mo set-pieces and a narrative, though simple, that was always grounded in identifiable human emotions.
John Woo was making films for a full 20 years before he decided on a plot device that he has revisited again and again over the more successful phase of his career as an "action first / plot second" writer-director.That wrinkle was to have a good guy and a bad guy exist alongside one another, and indeed even team up at times, so that the audience could see that they might not really be that different, and to lead to several stand-offs and situations where they are in close proximity.The first notable time that occurred was in this film made in 1986, but of course Woo went back to the well with The Killer, Hardboiled and Face/Off, among others.This film also showed that Chow Yun Fat is a cool cat regardless whether he is playing a good or a bad guy.
Having copped a little grief from his peers and superiors at having a crim for a brother Kit wants nothing to do with Ho, who only wants to prove that he is true to his word and is in fact going straight.Ho gets a job and does go straight, and when he comes across Mark he is saddened that he is now nothing more than a limping dogsbody for his new gang-boss Shing, the very guy who sold Ho out just 3 years prior.That is a lot of stuff, apparently 3 years is a very long time in Hong Kong.From this point the film becomes a tug of war: Ho wants nothing more than to show Kit he's a good boy now, Shing wants Ho back in the business, as does Mark who will not be allowed in without him, and Kit just wants to bust the whole lot of them to prove he is a supercop with no family bias.Given all that, it's hard to see this ending happily.The usual Woo signature flashes are present, the slo-mo violence, the generous and effective use of blood-packs and squibs to show the spurts created by some of the 77 rounds fired from each magazine, and in the Big Shootout at the end of the film Mark gets to use two pistols at once, something that he then did in every film he ended up doing with Woo.A Better Tomorrow doesn't hold up well unfortunately despite being seen as a genre-setting film at the time, and being namechecked by everyone and his Tarantino as being influential.
A Better Tomorrow is a story about the moral dilemma of an ex gangster whose recent release from prison has put him on a crossroad between his cop brother friend and his former friend and partner in crime.Few movies try to blend action and drama and even fewer succeed.
A Better Tomorrow is a well-known movie by many fans of cinema and it's not difficult to tell why.ABT indeed is a splendid example about how to make an extremely touching and deep movie with simple plot and great actors.Chow Yun Fat is (once again) great, his character embody the will to revenge of a man who lost wealth and money to regain honour as his partner Lung Ti.The character played by Leslie Cheung is a true gem, a policeman who has to choose between the love of a brother and justice.
The director is John Woo, it has Chow Yun Fat and the hype says it is action, but the movie was too slow paced again (like The Killer) and the action scenes (if it has any real one!) were not that great or unforgettable like the master's some other movies.
It was also refreshing for me to see a John Woo film without his usual trademarks, the only one is a character using two guns.The acting is decent, Ti Lung was good lead, and Leslie Cheung was showed some range in his supporting role.
Besides "The Killer" this is my favorite Chow Yun Fat/John Woo movie.
I didn't like A Better Tomorrow as much as other John Woo/Chow Yun-Fat movies like The Killer and Hard Boiled but it was still very entertaining.
"A better tomorrow" is filmed in 1986, directed by John Woo, acted by Chow Yun Fat, Ti Lung and Leslie Cheung.
Ti,Chow and Cheung decide to spend their rest lives with bullets......I think "a better tomorrow" is the best film of John Woo ever.
A Better Tomorrow made history, it started the career of Chow Yun-Fat and John Woo..
I saw this movie 2 months ago,after "The Killer",which i considered the best John woo'action flick...Until "A Better Tomorrow" came in my way!