A Better Tomorrow III: Love and Death in Saigon

This isn't A Better Tomorrow. It's a love story. A cliched love story at that. The love story was just as confusing as their one-handed machine gun wielding spraying, missing all of their targets (yet somehow still landing) .. Action plot was a mess, whoever gave Hark Tsui a go on this movie instead of John Woo should be fined .

The main actress was gorgeous though , with that - 5/10

A Better Tomorrow 3 takes place during the Vietnam war and goes back to show how Mark became the professional killer that he is. Cool action scenes, but low on the gore from the other films. The story is very well done for an action movie adding a romantic aspect to it. Excellent.

***1/2 out of ****

ABTIII is easily the best of the entire series. While loyal John Woo fans (like myself) may feel offended that a sequel was done without his involvement, this film stands alone as a true masterpiece of Tsui Hark's. Anita Mui is fantastic and lends real credibility and sensitivity to this film as the woman who teaches Yun Fat's "Mark" how to both "be cool" and use 2 guns at once. This film also doubles as a sensitive portrayal of the Vietnam conflict from "the other side", a view most Americans are unfamiliar with. A superb, compelling film with excellent performances, ABTIII is a real treasure for those willing to give it a look.

Different to John Woo's original two films, but it's almost as good. Chow (coolest man in the world) yun fat, gives a very charismatic performance, hilarious in the opening scenes when he walks around the airport with an unlit cigarette hanging from his lip, and gives a raw, powerful, emotional performance at the end. The action scenes although lacking the finesse of the John Woo trademark mayhem, are still high velocity and powerful. Aided well by the soaring soundtrack, this film although it can be a little slow, is a welcome and worthy addition to the better tomorrow films. I just loved every second of it. Although the subtitles were a little tricky to read in places but you can't blame the film for what someone else did to it. The major problem is the badly done music editing after the credits have rolled. However seeing as the actual film had finished by that point, not many people would notice.

Tsui Hark directed this sequel (1989) to John Woo's classic heroic bloodshed films Better Tomorrow 1 and 2 made couple of years earlier, and this third installment is more a prequel than sequel. It concentrates on what happened before the first two films and has more drama than action in it. Chow Yun Fat is again Mark Gor who is in Vietnam and meets there his cousin Mun (Leslie Cheung) who is just released from prison when Mark arrives in Vietnam. They meet mysterious female assassin Kit (the beautiful sweetheart Anita Mui) and both of the men are attracted by Kit. The film concentrates pretty much on the war infested Saigon and the hell that's free in there, so there isn't any particular plot in the film, but that doesn't mean it's not interesting.

I think there's couple of strong scenes of social criticism, mostly the horrific "customs scene" at the airport when Mark, Mun, Kit and Mun's father try to travel away from the country and are abused by the corrupted custom officers. Also the scene at the hospital is very harrowing and is there to underline righteously the state of the world of that time, and unfortunately there are even today places with same kind of circumstances in our world. Fortunately Tsui's attitude isn't this time as underlining as in his Once Upon a Time in China (1991), and Tomorrow 3 is therefore perhaps more noteworthy film as commenting society.

The visuals are also brilliant as can be expected from this director. There are great use of blue smoke again and the gun fights are incredibly beautifully shot and are more effective than any gun fight in some Western effort. The slow motion death scene of one important character in the film's finale is perhaps among the most beautiful "heroic death scenes" I've seen and it is finished very carefully and thus it has such a power. After that scene everyone should know what this name "heroic bloodshed" for this genre means and what makes it so unique. The end is very sad, too, but as we know how Mark ends up in his subsequent adventures, it gives some positivism for the sad ending of this third film. The ending is little irritating due to it's prolonged gun battles and fire power, and I think it should have stopped little earlier in order to be more effective finale for the otherwise pretty great film.

Better Tomorrow 3 is not as great and interesting as Woo's films, but still this is much more than average effort from Hollywood, and due to Tomorrow 3's great look and visuals, I give this gladly 8/10 rating and think this is among the greatest films Tsui Hark has directed himself. He has produced perhaps as many films as he has actually directed and many have said he is better producer than director, but this film shows that he really knows how to direct noteworthy films, too.