A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon Reviews

When John Woo and Tsui Hark couldn't agree on the focus of the second sequel in the hugely popular A BETTER TOMORROW series, producer Tsui took over as director as well, crafting a prequel with a richer emotional palate and vaster scope, but lacking the visceral immediacy of Part one. In 1974, Mark (Chow Yun-Fat) travels to Saigon to help his Uncle Cheung (Shek Kin) and cousin Chi-mun (Tony Leung Kar-fai) escape before the US withdraws and the city falls. Attempting to raise money via an underworld deal, they are double-crossed by Vietnamese officer Bong, but rescued by fellow Chinese black-marketeer Chow Ying-kit (Anita Mui). Running into trouble at the airport, they are rescued again by Kit, who then has to remain in Vietnam while Mark and his family emigrate to Hong Kong. When Kit finally makes it to Hong Kong also, Mark spurns her advances, stepping aside so his love-struck cousin can woo her. But Kit's gangland boss, Ho Cheung-ching (Saburo Tokito), unexpectedly returns from hiding and will have none of it. He bombs the cousins' store, killing Uncle Cheung, and warns the cousins to leave Hong Kong and never again see Kit. Mark and Kit finally succumb to their feelings for one another and spend the night in each other's arms, promising to flee Hong Kong together the next day. However both are lying; Mark sets out in the morning to kill Ho in retribution for Uncle's death, but Kit has already flown with Ho back to Vietnam, where she prepares a bomb to kill him. Mark and Mun follow her and discover Ho is engineering a deal with Bong. Bong effects another double-cross, leading to Ho's death and serious injury for Kit. Mark and Mun, carrying the wounded Kit, are chased through the streets by Bong in a tank before they manage to blow him up and escape in a helicopter. But by then Kit is dead. Tsui Hark grew up in the Chinese section of Saigon, and like the Japanese-born gangster in the film who changed his name to Ho (meaning "survival"), the former Tsui Man-kong chose a new, symbolic name in his youth, "Hark" meaning "overcoming." Despite the film's melodrama and contrived plot, Tsui invests it with atmospheric detail and period authenticity and manages to give glimpses of another facet of the war, the viewpoint of people struggling to carry on with their lives in the darkness of an occupied city. The first two films in the series had contained allegorical references to Hong Kong's 1997 anxiety (with their themes of betrayal and brotherhood), but Tsui made them more explicit, showing the difficulties of dealing with a totalitarian regime and corrupt bureaucracy, where even attempting to emigrate is a brutal struggle. He makes frighteningly apparent the emotional upheaval when the occupying Western forces suddenly pull out, leaving the locals at the mercy of the incoming Communists. Tellingly, Tsui also depicts a student march for freedom escalating into a riot violently quashed by soldiers--filmed only months after the Tiananmen incident occurred. The first Hong Kong film made in Vietnam after the war, it was a difficult shoot, with the government-assigned pyrotechnics expert accidentally blowing himself up and severely injuring his assistant. Tsui's vision is, if anything, even darker and bleaker than Woo's--relationships and emotions do exist other than blind devotion and duty, but still only lead to tragedy. Tsui had started his career making angry and cynical features, none more so than 1980's desperately downbeat DANGEROUS ENCOUNTER OF THE FIRST KIND (also dealing with spiritual disillusionment and including scenes of street rioting) before turning his hand to comedy for Cinema City studios. A BETTER TOMORROW III recalls his earlier, more pessimistic films, while its emphasis on tragic romance and sacrifice in the midst of heavy gunplay suggests a peculiar hybrid of RAMBO (1985) and CASABLANCA (1942). Beautifully shot and darkly atmospheric, more so in fact than the first two installments, the film features exciting but baroque showpiece action sequences that never quite attain the emotional heights of Woo's ballistic ballets. Likewise, the music utilizes the main theme from the predecessors, but Lowell Lo's score is muted, not as strong as Joseph Koo's. By 1989 the flow of A BETTER TOMORROW imitators had become a tidal wave, with fully 40 percent of Hong Kong's annual output of 250 films being gangster dramas. Even noted auteur Wong Kar-wai began his directing career with the male-bonding underworld story AS TEARS GO BY (1988). Tsui Hark, who blamed Woo for screwing up A BETTER TOMORROW II (and who originally envisioned the first film as being about three women, much like Tsui's contemporary 1986 masterpiece PEKING OPERA BLUES), departed from Woo's films by featuring a strong and capable female lead. Chow Yun-Fat reprises his star turn as Mark from the first film, but is younger here, not yet the hyper-cool antihero. Kit, we discover, is the one who first taught him how to shoot, who bought him his trademark overcoat and shades. And she spins every bit as stylishly in slow motion as he later would, with guns in each fist. The fulcrum of the plot, Anita Mui is marvelous as the valiant but doomed heroine. It's curious that she is given the same name as Leslie Cheung's character from the previous films, as is the focus on mentor-pupil relationships: Kit is Mark's, Ho is Kit's. A commentary on Woo and Tsui's relationship? The two would work together one more time with Tsui producing Woo's THE KILLER (1989), before the relationship crumbled into acrimony over respective credit for their collaborations. Woo would take his aborted version of the Vietnamese prequel and film it in Thailand as BULLET IN THE HEAD (1990), a brilliant parable of friendship corrupted by greed, with many parallels to A BETTER TOMORROW III. In 1994, RETURN TO A BETTER TOMORROW was released, but was a sequel in name only, with all new characters, actors, and filmmakers crafting an entirely new story of loyalty and betrayal among gangsters. (Graphic violence, sexual situations.)