This John Woo film tells the tale of Mark and Ho, friends and couriers for a Hong Kong crime syndicate with a large counterfeiting operation. Ho is double-crossed during a set-up and turns himself in to the police and Mark is shot during the firefight of a retribution hit. The plot is complicated by the fact that Ho's younger brother, Kit, is a rookie cop whose reputation is tarnished by his gangster brother. When Ho gets out of prison, he wants to start a new life, free of crime. Unfortunately, he is haunted by his past, with the crime bosses leaning on him and Mark encouraging him to return to a life of crime as his partner. In typical Woo fashion, the various factions clash and our protagonists engage both the police and the gangsters in a bloody bullet-fest.
I think this is only the second John Woo film that I've seen where the pressence of doves were absent (BROKEN ARROW was the other). This film put both John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat on the map and their best work was still to come (see HARD BOILED or THE KILLER). I loved John Woo's use of music with this film, a classical soundtrack which I throughly enjoyed. As I've stated before, John Woo is my favorite action director and if you've never seen this film, A BETTER TOMORROW II, HARD BOILED or THE KILLER, do yourself the favor and rent them!
