A BETTER TOMORROW III:
The Making of a Killer
(Chinatown Video)
Reviewed by Jonathan
Marshall
The last ABT film charts Mark (Chow Yun-Fat of The
Replacement Killers and Anna and the King) acquiring his quintessential
gangster cool. The real star though is Anita Mui as Kit, schooling Mark
in stylish gangsterism. From seeing Mui swing around with an M16 in each
hand, mowing down patsies while her trench-coat and hair coils about her, it is a short
step to her giving Chow the black coat and shades that define him in A Better Tomorrow and A Better Tomorrow II.
Mui’s character reveals the ease with which Hong Kong flicks place
beautiful women in such ultra-violent roles. Mui’s filmography is as
varied as Chow’s, from fantasy/kung fu (Saviour of the Soul)
to romantic comedy (Mr Canton and Lady Rose) and drama (Rouge), all
having a place in ABT III. Chow and Mui are
involved in a ‘love quadrangle’, with Mark backing away from Kit when his cousin
Mun falls for her, before Kit’s nasty lover Ho returns.
ABT III is characterised by an almost obsessive melding of
genres. The way the finale of the Vietnam War forces these members of the Chinese diaspora
to adopt violent, illegal means of survival gives the film a political bent, echoing Oliver
Stone’s Salvador. A series of short sketched scenes without
dialogue, showing close ups of the characters gazing at each other, gives the film its
gently comic romantic aura, while the elegant choreography of bodies, gestures and
clothing continues the dancerly feel of the gun-battles that John Woo established
with his direction of ABT I and II, transforming pistols into weapons
wielded more like swords. Tsui Hark wrote both ABT II and III,
and his direction here continues Woo’s epic sensibility. Where Woo
replays slowed iconic images from every direction, exploding them inward and
outward, Tsui places almost the entire film in slow mo. Indeed his
writing is even more loaded than ABT II, making the dialogue resemble a
collection of homilies and moralising imperatives. Tsui’s scoring
too echoes Woo’s, while nevertheless departing from it - pleasantly
less anthemic while still consisting of alternately cheesy or ominous late ‘80s
synthesiser music. One shortcoming is Tsui’s characteristically
truncated, leap-frogging script, in which problems are resolved as soon as they are
introduced. Moreover although this release is otherwise pristine, many edits seem
reconstituted from an incomplete copy. ABT III also has a low-key racist subtext
common to many HK (and US) films; Japanese and Vietnamese are the real villains. Even so, ABT
III is right up there with the compelling moralising mayhem of ABT II.
© 2000 Jonathan Marshall
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