Movie	Extras
Audio	Video

This is the Anchor Bay DVD.

Movie
Okay, you better be ready for this one.  With ‘A Better Tomorrow’ (here), John Woo proved that he could mix drama with action like nobody else.  With ‘A Better Tomorrow 2’, he proved that he could mix in really high drama with insane action sequences, and still make it work.  The story is about bad guys running a smuggling ring, and the police want Ti Lung to find out what he can and help the police catch the bad guys.  Well, it’s a bit more complex than that, but that’ll do.

The movie has 2 basic elements: drama and action.  It’s pretty much either one or the other (and sometimes mixes both elements together!).  Let’s face it, though, you watch a John Woo movie for the action.  If there’s good drama, it’s a very welcomed bonus.  The drama in this movie, some may say, is excessive, even unrealistic.  That may be true, but I was hooked.  It might be excessive and hard to take, but, especially in his Hong Kong movies, Woo has this talent of making me care for his characters from the get-go.  I want the good guys to come out on top and the bad guys to... well, to die. (What else would you expect in a Mr. Woo movie?)  That might be because the good guys always have the same basic values, which I admire.

I think John Woo (‘Just Heroes’) likes both guilt and honour.  Whatever the movie, those are the two common elements.  ‘The Killer’ (here) had those, ‘A Better Tomorrow’ had those, and this movie demonstrates both to the n-th degree.  The helplessness some of the characters evoke at times is stunning considering their Superman-like ability to survive the most torturous of events.  The things that Ti Lung and Leslie Chung (the 2 brothers, one an ex-con, one a cop) have to go through are almost unbearable, and I could definitely feel both their pain.  (I’m thinking of the drug deal where both brothers ‘meet for the first time’ so to speak.)   The film doesn’t go as much into the ramifications of some of the decisions the characters make as it could have, but thinking about what some of what the characters must go through, I can certainly feel their pain.

What pain is felt by anybody is what makes the action great.  The strength Ti Lung or Dean Shek’s characters must summon up to overcome and avenge the wrongs that have been done against them makes their pain worth it.

They might go through hell, but the action that shows up on the screen is incredible.  The many, many shoot-outs are perfectly staged, perfectly shot and perfectly executed.  The end of the movie in the house is a classic shoot-out that beats anything coming out of Hollywood, and could never be forgotten.  It is, I think, the first time Woo decided to throw realism out the door and go all-out.  I don’t care if it’s not realistic, it kicks ass.  Helped along by the legendary Ching Siu-Tung (‘Duel to the Death’, ‘Hero’, here)  The scene in the motel room when Chow Yun-Fat (‘Tiger on Beat’) and Mr. Shek (‘Laughing Times’) are hiding from the bad guys and the ensuing gunfight is one of those scenes that mixes drama with action, and the payoff it unreal.  I felt so happy after what these two went through.  And, as mentioned, the scene in the house is where the biggest payoff is found.  Everything in the movie comes to a head at that one point, and what Woo delivers in nothing short of phenomenal.

I recommend this movie emphatically.  If you’re a fan of John Woo (‘Last Hurrah for Chivalry’, ‘Hand of Death’) and haven’t seen it, jump on it as soon as you can.  If you’re a fan of Hong Kong flicks or action flicks, then jump on this movie as well.  You won’t be disappointed.  A lot of people have said that this movie is better than the original.  I honestly don’t know which is better.  ‘A Better Tomorrow’ may have a better dramatic story, but ‘A Better Tomorrow 2’ has better action sequences.  ‘A Better Tomorrow 3’ (here) may not have action sequences that are as exciting, but in some ways the backdrop may make for a better story.  Which is better?  You chose.  I don’t want to have to make that choice.

Trailers
You get the Hong Kong trailer, which, for some reason consists of scenes almost entirely taken from the first ‘A Better Tomorrow’ movie.  Anchor Bay also put the international trailer which is basically 3 minutes of guns shooting and people dying.  The sad thing is that it makes the movie look like a campy foreign actionner, when in fact it’s more than that.

Talent Files
Only Chow Yun-Fat (‘Full Contact’, here) and John Woo (‘Windtalkers’, here) get a nice biography and selected filmography.

Audio
The audio is fairly bad.  It’s only mono, but I’m not to disappointed because that’s what I expected.  A movie from Hong Kong from 1987 doesn’t usually get the 5.1 mix Hollywood movies get.  Apart from that, it’s nice enough.  The gunfire is intense, and you don’t really lose that here.  I found myself so enthralled by the movie that the sound didn’t seem important.  The subtitles are new, and Anchor Bay did a nice job with them.  They’re better than those from the Hong Kong Mega Star version of ‘A Better Tomorrow’, which is what I had.

Video
1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen.  The video is okay for the most part.  At times, it’s kind of bad, but that’s to be expected, I suppose.  There is some grain (a lot in some places), and some dust and particles here and there.  I was actually surprised to see that a lot of the time the picture was very clear.  The colors are fine, but they’re not as vivid or separate as they could be.

put up sometime in November 2002