They may have each been working diligently in the industry beforehand, but it was A Better Tomorrow and its sequels that catapulted both to international superstardom. Now, courtesy of Fortune Star's A Better Tomorrow Trilogy box set, we can revisit what made their partnership so special. When, for instance, Chow walks onscreen in his long woolen coat, sunglasses on and unlit matchstick gritted between his teeth, a pistol in each hand blazing away, the movie instantly transcends its B-movie origins and becomes a thrilling pop phenomenon. It's an iconic image, courtesy of Woo, and at that moment Chow Yun-Fat is undeniably the coolest motherfucker on Planet Earth.

A Better Tomorrow from 1986 is still the defining example of the HK "Heroic Bloodshed" genre. The picture was designed as a sort of Chinese Scarface, in which Chow's character Mark start as a low-level hood rising through the gangland ranks via his money-laundering operation, only to be betrayed from within by his own partners. His best friend Ho tries to go the straight and narrow after a few years in prison, but the down-and-out Mark soon drags him back into the action for some bloody retribution. The plot is pure pulp and in any other movie the loud ‘80s fashion and colors would be too horribly dated to endure. There's even a direct rip-off of the famous Godfather restaurant scene that is pretty shameless. But in Woo's hands the film becomes a paean to the virtues of brotherhood and misguided honor. The movie features what can be described as no less than an orgy of violence, each gunshot and blood splatter fetishized in Woo's trademark slo-mo ballet of bullets and bodies. The gunfights are simply awesome, and Woo uses them to elevate the dramatics to operatic proportions. It's a remarkably delicate balancing act and an amazingly entertaining joyride.

As with anything so wildly successful, a sequel was inevitable. Under pressure from super-producer Tsui Hark, Woo cranked out A Better Tomorrow II in time for release the following year, 1987. Chow Yun-Fat also returns to star, and anyone who actually saw all of the first movie probably wondered how the hell that could be possible considering…. well, if you've seen it you know. The cop-out explanation is that Chow now plays Ken, identical twin to his previous character Mark. Yes, it's lame, but it had to be done. There could be no sequel without Chow Yun-Fat, and frankly any excuse to put him and Woo back together can be easily forgiven.

Once you get over this basic contrivance, though, some other disappointments set in. In order to make the lead more identifiable for the audience and friendlier for international distribution, Ken is a much softer, less devious character than Mark. He's basically just a good guy who gets reluctantly dragged into his brother's old life. The movie's action is more ambitious in scope than the last picture, spread out between Hong Kong and New York, but after a strong start the story gets sidetracked in a lengthy and frankly asinine subplot about one of the main characters having a nervous breakdown. Woo and Tsui Hark reportedly clashed over the direction the series should take, and this results in a wildly uneven picture. On the other hand, when it works it really works. The action is again spectacular, and by its latter half the plot finally settles down into a basic but functional revenge tale that is perfectly sufficient to build up enough momentum for the intense climax in which Ken, returning sidekick Ho, and Ho's little brother Kit (also returning from the first movie) lay siege to a mansion full of gangsters and turn it into a grisly abattoir of close-quarters machine gun fire. Part II is not nearly as good as part I on the whole, but it has more than enough highlights to make it a satisfying follow-up to the original.

By the time A Better Tomorrow III came around in 1989, John Woo had left the series and producer Tsui Hark (a prolific A-list director himself) took over the reigns. Chow is back as Mark again, which can only mean one thing; yes, the third entry is a prequel, showing us the origin of the character we met in the first film. Set entirely as a flashback to the Vietnam era, if part III has one fundamental problem it is that the movie has next to nothing to do with either of the first two pictures. Sure, the character shares the same name, and Tsui throws in a few token references to the sources of his famous coat, sunglasses, and dual-pistol shootout technique, but otherwise any connections are tenuous. Mark here acts nothing at all like the Mark of the first film; he's more of a good-natured fellow like Ken, whose existence by the way is never mentioned a single time. Nor is there any reference to vital characters Ho and Kit. There are other characters named Kit and Ho in this movie, completely unassociated with the originals (maybe that's meant as a joke, or maybe the filmmakers never even made the connection). It's as though the film began life as an unrelated Vietnam project that Tsui decided to shoehorn into his popular franchise.

The third movie is by far the weakest of the trilogy. Although Tsui has made more than his share of action movies and knows a thing or two about putting together an effective shootout, he's more concerned with setting up flashy "hero" shots of the actors posed with their guns firing that look good on posters and in movie trailers. The violence here is much less bloody and intense than what Woo had established for the series. Tsui tries to make the plot into a larger-than-life love triangle between Mark, friend Mun (Tony Leung Ka-Fai), and mutual girlfriend Kit (the late Anita Mui), but only achieves mixed results. His attempts at social commentary also come across ham-fisted, and the big climax goes too far over the top with its ridiculously staged action and heroics. Tsui wants the movie to be an epic, but it almost turns into a parody. There are a handful of good moments in the film, and if it were released as an independent picture without trying to be a Better Tomorrow sequel it might be OK, but the storyline is just too inconsistent to be considered a legitimate prequel to the other movies, and it comes out as a big disappointment.

What is not disappointing is the totality of the A Better Tomorrow Trilogy as a single package. Despite their ups and downs, the movies are great and easily repeatable entertainment.

Final Thoughts:
The films in the A Better Tomorrow Trilogy are undisputed landmarks of Hong Kong action cinema...