Category Archives: Hong Kong Film Corner

A BETTER TOMORROW (1986) – John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat change action movies forever! 

Posted on by Bradley Crain

As I continue my celebration of Chow Yun-Fat, who turns 70 years old on May 18, 2025, I decided to revisit the film that made him a star, the Hong Kong classic A BETTER TOMORROW (1986).

This undisputed action movie classic opens with Ho (Ti Lung) and his partner and best friend, Mark (Chow Yun-Fat) going about a normal workday. Except these two men are part of a triad organization that manufactures counterfeit American dollars. Ho seems serious while Mark appears to be the fun, cool guy, with his trench coat, Alain Delon sunglasses, and huge smile. They stroll through their organization’s offices, play with piles of fake money, and Mark even lights his cigarette with a $100 bill. They seem to have the world by a string when their boss asks Ho to take an up and coming guy in the organization named Shing (Waise Lee) along on their next deal in Taiwan. Before heading to Taiwan, Ho goes to see his dad in the hospital where he sees his younger brother Kit (Leslie Cheung), who has entered the Hong Kong police academy and is completely unaware that Ho is part of a criminal organization. Ho’s dad doesn’t want to see his sons on the opposite side of the law, so he asks him to leave his life of crime behind. Ho decides that the job in Taiwan will be his last, but unfortunately, the deal quickly goes awry, turning into a big shootout, with Ho and Shing barely escaping with their lives. They are tracked down by the police where Ho turns himself in, allowing Shing to escape. When the triad bosses find out that Ho has been arrested, they send a big henchman to kidnap his dad, who is now at Kit’s house, as leverage to make sure Ho doesn’t talk to the police. Kit, his girlfriend and his dad all fight the huge henchman, but dad is eventually stabbed to death. Cut to Mark reading the paper and seeing that his best friend has been arrested. He finds the betrayer in the Fung Lim restaurant and proceeds to take his revenge, in slow motion and with two guns no less. On his way out though, he takes a couple of rounds to his right knee. 

Cut to three years later and Ho is getting out of prison. Kit doesn’t want to have anything to do with him and blames him for their father’s death. Distraught, but knowing he needs to work, he goes to a taxi company run by Ken (Kenneth Tsang) and is able to land a job. While working his shift, he goes by their old office building and sees Mark, who’s now a cripple with a limp and a leg brace. Shing, now a boss, walks out of the building surrounded by his bodyguards and throws cash on the ground at Mark’s feet, treating him like nothing more than a beggar. Ho goes to talk to Mark and the two men embrace. Mark wants to join forces with Ho and retake the underworld by storm. Ho wants to steer clear of his old life and try to reconnect with a completely uninterested Kit. Everything comes to a head when Kit is set up by Shing to be shot and Mark is viciously beaten. Determined to relive his old glory days, and now having given up on Ho for help, Mark breaks into the triad’s offices and steals the plate that is used to create the phony money. Ho has decided he can no longer sit on the sidelines. He and Mark use the plate as an excuse to lure Shing and his men to the docks where they engage in an apocalyptic shootout that will change all of their lives forever. 

It’s hard to know where to start when talking about a movie like A BETTER TOMORROW. I’m not going to do a normal review where I discuss the various pros and cons of the film. Why, you ask? Because it’s a great movie, but it’s so much more than just that. A BETTER TOMORROW would change action filmmaking forever, and eventually turn Director John Woo and actor Chow Yun-Fat into worldwide stars. It would become the highest grossing film in Hong Kong cinema history. It would create a trenchcoat fad in tropical Hong Kong that would find its way across the world entrapping movie nerds like a young Quentin Tarantino. It would create the heroic bloodshed film genre, a genre that would become a staple of Hong Kong cinema for years to come. It would mix balletic action and raw emotion in a way that had never been done before. And the whole world would eat it up. John Woo may have even made better action films in the ensuing years with movies like THE KILLER and HARD-BOILED, but they were all inspired by the greatness and success of A BETTER TOMORROW. It’s quite simply one of the most influential movies of all time, and it’s still influencing later generations of filmmakers. I watched Gareth Evans’ new film HAVOC (2025) a few days ago, and it clearly pays homage to this amazing film through its use of music from a key scene.

I did want to talk a little bit about the main stars of the film. Ti Lung, who plays Ho, was one of the great stars of the Shaw Brothers kung fu films from the 70’s. He’s excellent in the lead role, so much so that the he would win the Taiwan Golden Horse award as best actor for his performance. Leslie Cheung, who plays the younger brother Kit, was a huge pop star in Hong Kong. He sings the memorable tune that plays over the film’s closing credits. I’ll admit that his portrayal of Kit gets on my nerves, though. While I can understand his feelings of anger towards his brother, he often comes off as whiney, acting more like a petulant child than a serious adult. He would become a very good actor over time, but I don’t think he’s very good here. On a sad note, on April 1st, 2003, suffering from depression, Cheung would commit suicide by jumping off the 24th floor of the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong. It was a tragic end for a great Hong Kong artist. It’s hard to believe now, but prior to A BETTER TOMORROW, Chow Yun-Fat was considered “box office poison.” He had been a TV star in Hong Kong, but his movies would never do very well. That would all change with A BETTER TOMORROW. Even though he was more of a supporting character in the film, he became the undisputed breakout star and he would capture the hearts of the people of Hong Kong and all of Asia from that point forward. His charismatic performance became the personification of the flawed, emotional, heroic, super-badass. Women loved him and men wanted to be like him, and he made it all look so easy. I’ve said before that he’s one of the great international movie stars of the last 40 years. It all began with A BETTER TOMORROW.

Finally, I wanted to take a moment to discuss the Director of A BETTER TOMORROW, John Woo. Woo had been kicking around the Hong Kong film industry for many years, having directed quite a few martial arts films and comedies in the 70’s and early 80’s. By the time of A BETTER TOMORROW, he was considered past his prime. He wanted to make films like his heroes Jean-Pierre Melville and Martin Scorsese, but was considered too much of a risk by most of the local industry. Luckily for him, Tsui Hark and Cinema City would give him a chance to make the movie he wanted to make, even if it came with a tight budget, and a cast that included a fading martial arts star and the human equivalent of box office poison. Woo would take this opportunity and change what action movies looked like forever. Good for him, and us, as we’d get so many great films, including one of my all time favorites, FACE/OFF (1997) with John Travolta and Nicolas Cage. I said all of this about the stars because before A BETTER TOMORROW came out, it looked like a project that would go nowhere fast. Instead it changed the world of cinema. It also changed the world of a movie nerd from Toad Suck, Arkansas, with the aftermath of its success providing so many hours of entertainment in my own life. It’s truly amazing what one great film can do. 

The Hong Kong Film Corner: PRISON ON FIRE (1987), starring Chow Yun-Fat and directed by Ringo Lam!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Chow Yun-Fat turns 70 years old on May 18, 2025. I’m going to celebrate his career by revisiting some of his best movies this month.  

PRISON ON FIRE begins with a young man named Lo Ka Yiu (Tony Leung Ka-fai) accidentally killing a thug who physically assaults his dad. He soon finds himself convicted of manslaughter and is sentenced to three years in a Hong Kong prison. Lo is not cut out for life in prison, and it doesn’t take long for him to get on the wrong side of the gang leaders. They immediately sniff out his weakness and go about terrorizing him and blaming him for everything that comes up. This extends to the head prison guard Scarface (Roy Cheung), a completely ruthless bastard who does his part to make life miserable for the newbie. Luckily for Lo, he meets Ching (Chow Yun-Fat), a seemingly happy go lucky fellow prisoner who takes pity on the young man and decides to show him the ropes. Ching is one of those guys who keeps things loose and seems to be able to get along with everybody. The two men form a good friendship, but that doesn’t stop gang leader Micky and Scarface from continuing to pick on Lo. When Ching and Lo have had enough and stand up for themselves, all hell breaks loose! 

PRISON ON FIRE is an excellent example of a high quality Hong Kong film of the time. The characterizations and tone are uneven and over the top at times, but director Ringo Lam knows how to rein everything in just enough to convey the power in the story without making us laugh at it all. Tony Leung Ka-fai (known as big Tony in 80’s & 90’s Hong Kong film circles to distinguish him from the great Tony Leung Chiu-wai), portrays his character as weak and afraid until he’s been pushed so far by the gang leaders that he basically loses control and begins attacking everyone with a huge shard of glass. I don’t love the performance, but he does effectively show what happens to a nice, but weak guy in this situation. Chow Yun-Fat is not the superhuman, cool badass of films like THE KILLER and HARD-BOILED in this film. Rather, Chow plays his character as funny, easy-going, and not especially tough, until the prison guard Scarface pushes him so far that he loses control and deforms the man for life in a scene that’s extremely exciting and ends with a gruesome exclamation point. It’s an endlessly likable performance. Scarface is played by the fine Hong Kong actor Roy Cheung. His portrayal of the character makes Clancy Brown’s Captain Hadley in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION almost seem like a nice guy in comparison. You can’t help but be emotionally invested when a possessed Chow takes him on at the end. The other standout performances are from Ka-Hui Ho and Tommy Kwong as the gang leaders in the jail. Ho’s Micky is an absolutely garbage human being, while Kwong’s Bill is tough, but ultimately good to our heroes. 

For historical reference, PRISON ON FIRE was released in 1987, at the height of Chow Yun-Fat’s popularity and at a time when he was working non-stop. It was one of eleven movies he made in 1987, with CITY ON FIRE, AN AUTUMN’S TALE, and A BETTER TOMORROW II being other standouts. Just think about that, 11 different movies in one year alone. It’s quite the tribute to his talent that he was able to create unique and memorable characters that have stood the test of time. As a matter of fact he would win a Hong Kong Film Award in 1987 for his performance in the prior year’s A BETTER TOMORROW, and he would win one again the next year for Ringo Lam’s CITY ON FIRE. He is truly one of the great international stars of the last 40 years. He doesn’t work very often these days, but he’s still making movies and is generally considered one of the nicest, most humble humans on earth. He’s famous for the way he treats his fans, usually grabbing their phones and taking selfies with them with a big smile on his face! This is going to be a fun month as I rewatch many of the movies that made him famous. 

Here’s an extremely long Trailer for PRISON ON FIRE without subtitles. It focuses on the action elements of the film so it’s pretty easy to follow.

Chow Yun-Fat is the GOD OF GAMBLERS (1989)!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

There aren’t that many times in your life when you watch a movie that completely catches you by surprise. My initial viewing of the GOD OF GAMBLERS circa 1997 is one of those times in my life. Up to that point I had only seen Chow Yun-Fat in the John Woo classics THE KILLER and HARD-BOILED, and I was beginning the process of trying to find and watch as many of his films as possible. When my Tai Seng VHS tape of GOD OF GAMBLERS arrived in the mail, I was very excited to pop it in the VCR and watch another badass Chow Yun-Fat classic! I wasn’t quite prepared for what I was about to see…

The film’s opening credits feature Ko Chun (Chow Yun-Fat), the world famous, mysterious “God of Gamblers” in Tokyo for a match with Ueyama, (Yasuhiro Shikamura), Japan’s top gambler. Ko Chun looks unbelievably cool in his dark suit and slicked back hair (Killer style), as he strolls into the casino, accompanied by the film’s rousing main theme, flanked by his beautiful girlfriend Janet (Sharla Cheung) and his personal assistant and friend, Ko Yee (Fong Lung). After being soundly defeated by Ko Chun, Ueyama asks the God of Gamblers to take on the dangerous Singaporean gambler Chan Kam-sing (Hon-Lam Pau), the Demon of Gamblers, in a high stakes poker match on his behalf. It seems the “demon” had beaten Ueyama’s father in a gambling match a few years earlier by cheating, ultimately driving the man to suicide. Ko Chun agrees to help Ueyama get his revenge. Knowing it could get dangerous, Ueyama assigns Dragon (Charles Heung), a former Vietnamese special forces soldier, to be Ko Chun’s bodyguard. The stage seems to be set for badass action and tricky gambling and then….

Walking home a night later after besting another group of duplicitous gamblers, Ko Chun falls into a booby trap that was set by Knife (Andy Lau) to screw around with his Indian neighbor who’s been getting on his nerves. Ko’s resulting fall and bump on the head causes him to have amnesia and revert to the mental level of a small child. Knife and his girlfriend Jane (Joey Wong), take him in and try to figure out who he is. The couple soon learns that the only thing that can calm him down and keep him from screaming is giving him his favorite chocolate treats. Knife, who’s obsessed with gambling, but is not very good at it, soon enlists “Chocolate,” his nickname for the stranger, to help him with some of his get-rich-quick, gambling schemes. Along the way, Knife discovers that Chocolate has amazing gambling skills even though he acts like a child. At first he tries to exploit him for his own purposes, but over time Knife begins to care about Chocolate and decides he will try to get him some help.

Will Chocolate get hit by a car, smash his head through the driver’s side window and turn back into Ko Chun? Will his friend Ko Yee, who’s always been jealous of Ko Chun’s success, align himself with Chan Kam-sing and murder Janet? Will Dragon turn out to be one badass bodyguard? Will Ko Chun / Chocolate grab two pistols and kill a group of assassins in slow motion? Will the God of Gamblers face off against the Demon of Gamblers in international waters and win? Will he remember Knife who has turned out to be a good friend to him?

For the first 30 minutes of GOD OF GAMBLERS, I was getting the exact Chow Yun-Fat I was expecting with his unmatched charisma completely dominating the proceedings. And then he hits his head. When I first watched this film I had never seen Chow in a comedy so I wasn’t expecting how over the top he would go. Watching the “coolest actor in the world” scream uncontrollably and beg for chocolates was something I wasn’t emotionally prepared for at the time and I specifically remember that “WTF” feeling that came over me. I had also never seen a “Wong Jing film” so I didn’t understand the extreme changes in tone that the film would undergo, one of the trademarks of his films. One minute I’m watching a suave Chow Yun-Fat, the next minute I’m watching crude, goofy comedy with Andy Lau and Shing Fui-On, and a little later there’s a man raping a corpse. What I soon realized was that in the world of 1980’s Hong Kong cinema, the rules are much different than American films and you never know what you might see next. That unique nature of Hong Kong cinema hooked me completely and it became my obsession for the next several years with Chow Yun-Fat as my favorite leading man. GOD OF GAMBLERS gave me an entertaining film while opening up a whole new world of entertainment. 

GOD OF GAMBLERS was a huge box office hit and started a new craze in the Hong Kong film industry for gambling films. Stephen Chow, another huge star in Hong Kong, released the movie ALL FOR THE WINNER just a year later in 1990 where he would play the “Saint of Gamblers.” It would be an even bigger hit than GOD OF GAMBLERS. The Saint of Gamblers and the God of Gamblers’ protege Knife (Andy Lau) would join forces in Wong Jing’s proper sequel GOD OF GAMBLERS II (1990). Gong Li would even join the fun with Stephen Chow in GOD OF GAMBLERS III: BACK FROM SHANGHAI (1991). Chow Yun-Fat finally returned to the role of Ko Chun in 1994 in THE RETURN OF THE GOD OF GAMBLERS. While not as strong as the original, it was another crazy entry in the series and another huge box office smash. 

The last things I want to mention about GOD  OF GAMBLERS are its two main stars, Chow Yun-Fat and Andy Lau. Chow Yun-Fat is incredible in the role of Ko Chun / Chocolate. He’s so cool and he’s also genuinely funny. He’s so charming in the role and it’s no shock that Hong Kong audiences and critics were completely enamored by him. When this film was made in 1989, Chow had won the previous two years Hong Kong Film Awards (the Hong Kong Oscar) for best Actor for John Woo’s A BETTER TOMORROW (1986) and Ringo Lam’s CITY ON FIRE (1987), a film that would heavily influence Quentin Tarantino’s RESERVOIR DOGS (1992). Chow would get nominated twice for his 1989 movies GOD OF GAMBLERS and ALL ABOUT AH-LONG, winning the award for the latter. Dominating both the box office and awards shows, Chow Yun-Fat was the unquestioned greatest leading man in Hong Kong cinema at the time. Andy Lau is another huge star in the world of Hong Kong entertainment. A dual threat, Lau was not just a leading movie star in the industry, he was also one of its biggest pop stars, where he is known as one of the “Four Heavenly Kings of Cantopop.” To this day, Andy Lau is still a huge star in Hong Kong cinema. With that said, I’ve never thought that his character of Knife was one of his best. He’s a pretty selfish asshole for much of the film before having a change of heart near the end. He was so good in the following year’s A MOMENT OF ROMANCE (1990), as well as later films like RUNNING OUT OF TIME (1999) and INFERNAL AFFAIRS (2002). He’s incredibly talented, but his shallow character ultimately suffers in comparison to Chow Yun-Fat’s incredible performance in this film. 

If it’s not obvious, I highly recommend GOD OF GAMBLERS to any adventurous viewer who’s willing to simply follow the story wherever it goes. If nothing else, just sit back and enjoy Chow Yun-Fat in one of my favorite performances in Hong Kong cinema, or any other cinema for that matter.  

THE KILLER – The film that introduced Hong Kong Heroic Bloodshed and Chow Yun-fat to the rest of the world!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

It was 1997 and I was in an outlet mall in Branson, MO. Being a film buff, I found myself looking for entertainment related books and noticed a book with Jackie Chan on the cover called “Hong Kong Babylon.” Jackie was enjoying some popularity in the United States at the time due to the financial success of RUMBLE IN THE BRONX. I opened up the book and started browsing through the various chapters. I saw blurbs about a bunch of movies I had never heard of and blurbs about a bunch of people I had never heard of. Jackie Chan was the only person I knew anything about. I put the book down because I saw another book about Hong Kong movies. This one was called “Sex & Zen and A Bullet in the Head.” I opened it up and saw some of the same people and movies mentioned in the other book. I liked this book better because it had more pictures. I remember this second book opening with a chapter called “10 that Rip.” It was their listing of 10 movies that would determine if you were a potential Hong Kong movie fan or not. Watching these movies would either open up that part of your mind that got excited about Hong Kong movies, or you would be hopelessly lost and not a candidate for Hong Kong movie fandom. As I looked closer, I noticed this same man in both books. He was usually holding a gun and looking extremely cool. That man’s name was Chow Yun-fat, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought I remembered seeing him years earlier on a VHS box at our local Hastings Entertainment Superstore. Not really being a fan of foreign movies at the time of the Hastings notice, I didn’t pay much attention, but now I really took notice. Chow caught my attention, but I also found it interesting that there were so many other movies that I’d never heard of, and I thought I knew a lot about movies. I bought both books and took them home with me. It’s no exaggeration to say that these books changed my life, and I was soon lost in a world of Hong Kong films.

No film exemplified my newfound love for Hong Kong movies more than THE KILLER, which was directed by John Woo and starred my new obsession, Chow Yun-fat. I was happy to find that it was readily available on VHS. I watched it on repeat. I had not seen anything that I thought was so awesome. The story is simple. It’s about a hitman, the killer of the title (Chow Yun-fat), accidentally blinding a nightclub singer (Sally Yeh) when he’s performing a job. Feeling devastated that he hurt this beautiful woman, he spends the next few months hanging around the nightclub hoping to have a chance to help her. He finally gets a chance one night when a group of young hooligans attack her on her way home. Chow steps in and beats the crap out of the guys and sends them on their way. This starts a beautiful relationship and the two fall in love. The killer has to perform one more job to get the money needed for a surgery that will hopefully restore her eyesight.  When performing that last job, a tough cop (Danny Lee) finds himself on the trail of the killer and will do anything to get his man. John Woo has somehow crafted a story where Chow Yun-fat is an honorable “killer” on a noble mission to protect this young woman, and who is now the target of the Chinese triads trying to eliminate him. While trying to bring down the killer, the tough cop finds himself caught in the crossfire between the killer and the triads. When Chow goes out of his way to take a hurt young girl to the hospital, our tough cop realizes the hitman isn’t that bad after all, and the two men begin to have a respect for each other. There’s no time to rest though, as they find themselves having to team up to take on an army of triad soldiers armed to the teeth and out for blood.

I had never seen anything like THE KILLER up to that point in my life. The action had a style and flare that aroused everything I love about movies. I soon learned it fit into a subgenre of Hong Kong films labelled “heroic bloodshed,” a genre that I would go deep, deep, deep, into! The opening action sequence features the impossibly charismatic Chow Yun-fat dressed impeccably, taking on an underworld boss and his henchman, with two guns blazing in stylish slow motion. John Woo’s work has been endlessly copied by this point, but that does not take away how I felt watching this movie for the first time. I also loved the shameless sentimentality in the film, first between the killer and the singer, and then later between the killer and the cop. For a movie that’s balls to walls action, it has a huge heart. I was hooked.

I immediately began searching out all of John Woo’s films including A BETTER TOMORROW, BULLET IN THE HEAD and HARD-BOILED. After I watched those movies, I started trying to find every Chow Yun-fat film I could. I’ll never forget how I felt when I saw GOD OF GAMBLERS for the first time. I realized that Chow could do anything, not just cool heroic bloodshed films. I will tell anyone who’ll listen that Chow Yun-fat is my favorite living actor. After being a fan for 27 years, I still search the internet for any news I can find about a movie he may be working on.

And it all started at an outlet mall in Branson, MO, and when I first got my hands on THE KILLER.