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New 4K restoration celebrating the 40th anniversary of John Woo's landmark action classic!"A Better Tomorrow"
(John Woo, 1986, 95 min, Hong Kong, Cantonese with English subtitles, DCP)
-- -- Introduced by Prof. Eileen Cheng-yin Chow (Asian & Middle Eastern Studies)
A reforming ex-gangster tries to reconcile with his estranged policeman brother, but the ties to his former gang are difficult to break.
The box-office sensation that established director John Woo as the king of 1980s Hong Kong action cinema and set the standard for the heroic bloodshed genre, this electrifying gangster saga combines the director's intricate bullet play with operatic emotion as it tracks the explosive relationship between two brothers, one a criminal trying to reform (Ti Lung), the other a fledgling graduate of the HK police academy (Leslie Cheung) who blames his brother for their father's death. The plot revolves around the split when the younger brother learns the other is a criminal and the efforts of the criminal brother to reform. Along the way are plenty of heists, double-crosses, and shoot outs, and in the first of his celebrated collaborations with Woo, Chow Yun-fat radiates his matchless cool as a hit man who lives by his own code.
"After an up and down decade as a director for hire, working alternately in the wuxia and wacky comedy genres, John Woo finally hit it big in 1986 when he teamed up with Tsui Hark and the Cinema City studio to remake Patrick Lung Kong's 1967 drama THE STORY OF A DISCHARGED PRISONER. One of the most influential films of the past 30 years, A BETTER TOMORROW established the formal and thematic template for a new era of crime movie: everything that has followed, from Woo's follow-up masterpieces THE KILLER and HARD-BOILED to the Triad films of Johnnie To to myriad international imitators. ... The advanced techniques of the Hong Kong action cinema translated from the period kung fu and wuxia film to the modern world of cops and robbers, from swordplay to gunplay.... Precision cutting and flowing camera movement would come to define the action film, blowing away the tension-based American system with a surfeit of bullets, preferably fired by a man clenching a matchstick in his teeth, firing two handguns at once in a vain attempt at exorcising his existential pain." -- Sean Gilman, The Chinese Cinema
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Sponsored by Duke Cinematic Arts and the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute (APSI)
Event URL: https://cinematicarts.duke.edu/screensociety/screenings/better-tomorrow-john-woo-1986-new-4k-restoration
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Screen/Society screenings are free and open to the public.
Parking Info: https://artscenter.duke.edu/parking
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Event venue
Rubenstein Arts Center at Duke University, 2022 Campus Dr, Durham, NC 27708-9940, United States
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