A BETTER TOMORROW (2010)

 Pretty unnecessary remake of the John Woo action classic and Mr. Woo is a producer here.
 While this a good movie, done really well, with excellent acting and lots of crazy gunplay towards the end I would still say the original tops it. For one thing there's no one as charismatic as Chow Yun-Fat here, for another, like most of these modern Korean action flicks, it's over 2 hours long with a lot of dramatic downtime in-between gangster fights and explosions. Still if you're a fan of the original and aren't disgusted by the very idea of a remake this one does Korean-ize things and change some stuff around. There's also a pretty nihilistic ending which is something I'm usually a fan of though I don't think it worked all that well here. As usual stick with the original formula.

A BETTER TOMORROW (1986)

 As far as action movies go there's not much better than 80's/90's Hong Kong. Kind of like how Italy reinvigorated the western back in the 60's Hong Kong took the standard American action flick and added a certain style and level of violence that reshaped the genre. This one here, directed by the master of these sorts of movie, John Woo, is a gangster/action movie containing tons of gun-fu and graphic bloodshed. Chow Yun Fat is featured, although he's actually not the main star here since 70's kung-fu mainstay Ti Lung has the main role. I think it's great to see Mr. Fat in a slightly lesser role and he gets to be a real bad-ass as the sidekick character. The story concerns two brothers who end up on the opposite sides of the law, one being a cop and the other a criminal. It all ends with lots of bullet holes, exploding barrels and lots of people dead. There are a couple of segments that lay a little heavy on the drama but I think the kick-ass action more than makes up for these slight slow overly-dramatic spots.
 There was A BETTER TOMORROW II the following year and A BETTER TOMORROW III: LOVE AND DEATH IN SAIGON in '89. I think I have seen both of these but I should probably re-watch them since I'm not 100 % certain. There was also a South Korean remake in 2011 that I have definitely not seen.

HARD BOILED (1992)

 As I've probably said here more than once before the 90's were a bleak time for U.S. cinema.  Anything cool that remained from the 70's had been turned into complete shit by the awfulness of the 80's and now we were entering the black hole of a self-aware mocking parody of consciousness which still lingers on today like an old stale fart.  Real horror films were practically non-existent and action movies had become lifeless predictable boring jokes. The only place to find anything remotely different was Asia and directors like John Woo.  It's hard to see looking back now, after he had been co-opted by the Hollywood shit-spewing machine, to remember how fresh his films seemed at the time.  There really wasn't any comparison.  The violence, action and stuntmen willing to risk their lives just to make a scene look good were sorely lacking from most American flicks in this genre at the time.  Compared to some haf-assed jokey movie like DIE HARD this movie seems so much more iconic to me.  Check it out for Chow Yun-Fat as a cool mother-fucker and people eating in restaurants full of birdcages.  If you are gonna watch this though stick with the subtitles since the dubbed version makes this movie seem way too fucking goofy.