Starring: Joo Jin-mo, Song Sung-hyun, Kim Kang-woo, Jo Han-seon Director: Song Hae-sung Category: IIB (Korean and English)
Slick and unspectacular, the John Woo Yu-sum-produced Korean remake of his classic Hong Kong 'bullet ballet' highlights the genre's stagnation over the 2 1/2 decades since the original hit the screens.
The movie that established Woo's fame and propelled Chow Yun-fat into the upper echelons of stardom, the initial A Better Tomorrow had a huge impact on Hong Kong's action cinema, and its reverberations were eventually absorbed worldwide. So much so that whatever was fresh and novel in 1986 has been done to death in the intervening years, with the result that the latest Tomorrow comes across as pass?as yesterday.
Not that the first A Better Tomorrow was remarkable in terms of plot or characterisations. And so credit is due to the quartet of Korean scriptwriters (Kim Hyo-seok, Lee Taek-gyeong, Choi Geun-mo and Kim Hae-gon) who try to add a few layers to the mix. This is no slavish copy of the Hong Kong film but one inseparable from its Korean identity, to the extent that the brothers at its centre are refugees from the North. Elder sibling Kim Hyuk (Joo Jin-mo, in the role originated by Ti Lung), ends up on the wrong side of the law, while kid brother Kim Chul (Kim Kang-woo, in the Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing role) becomes a cop. Hyuk's partners in crime are the swaggering but righteous Lee Young-chun (Song Sung-hyun) and seemingly self-effacing underling Jong Tae-min (Jo Han-seon), in the roles made famous by Chow Yun-fat and Waise Lee Chi-hung.
The plot follows the same basic lines of betrayal and familial conflicts, but with a palpably darker tone.
Unfortunately for director Song Hae-sung, the back story takes so long to set up that it adds a turgid if action-packed half-hour to the proceedings. Not all the changes backfire, though. Most welcome is the excision of the prototype's lone female lead (the cop's girlfriend), a part whose one-note slapstick is not missed. Alas, the new version has filled the gap with a surfeit of machismo and male tears, excising the charm and eccentricity that leavened the original's darkness. It was these qualities that were hallmarks of the role inherited by Korean star Song, whose gangster may look and act the part but doesn't have a chance of attaining the iconic status of Chow's 'Mark Gor' (Big Brother Mark) - or transform this competently executed thriller into a work likely to be recalled after a quarter-century of tomorrows.