Viewers familiar with the Hong Kong box office champ might think a follow up would be redundant, but here's one sequel which, while almost identical to its predecessor, actually improves on it in every department. The new film follows the usual Hong Kong movie-making method of imitating and exaggerating Hollywood's most obvious formulas, and the result is a gangster thriller mashing every underworld cliché into one silly, blood-soaked melodrama. The original cast is back, including superstar Chow Yun Fat as the twin brother of one popular character killed in the earlier film, and the bigger budget means better production values, with a few scenes photographed on location in NYC. Also like the original Part II glorifies every code in the lexicon of machismo, and with (believe it or not) even more outrageous bloodletting: the body count in the Peckinpah-plus finale is astronomical. But the violence is exaggerated beyond comic book proportions, with no message to get in the way of the often exhilarating, purely escapist entertainment. Look for actor/director Peter Wang ('A Great Wall'), who makes a brief cameo appearance before (of course) being gunned down in cold blood.
Review of A Better Tomorrow II
