Plot: Ho (Ti Lung) was sent to prison after the death of Shing (Waise Lee), although now he’s given the chance to be released from prison. Chance being that he accepts to work as an undercover agent, his mission to hunt down his master, Lung (Dean Shek) and have him arrested under the suspicion of counterfeiting. Although it turns out that Ko, Lungs right hand man, is counterfeiting the cash and frames Lung for murder.
Lung flee’s to America where he takes cover in a local church with his friend, Sam (Whom also is a ex-Triad). Yet Ko’s man have followed him. Lung manages to escape alive, but ends up going insane due to these situations.
Kit (Leslie Cheung) is still an undercover cop, who is actually working on the same case as Ho. But, Billie (Kit’s undercover name) has actually gotten close to Lung by dating his daughter, Peggy. If your wondering, yes Kit is still with Jackie and she’s pregnant!
Now with Ho meets an old friend, who is a comic book artist. He’s obsessed with Mark (from A Better Tomorrow 1). He even has collected the jacket he wore the night he died. The coat was known to contain over 40 bullet holes! Ho soon finds out from the artist that Mark actually has a twin brother named Ken (Chow Yun-Fat). But he lives in America running a Chinese Restaurant.
Ken seems quite harmless until one day where he as to fight off some Americans whom trying to force Ken into paying them protection money. Ken refuses and ends up shooting one person and embarrassing the other.
Ken soon finds out about Lung (also his master) turning insane and finds out that he is being kept in an local asylum. Ken knows that locking him up in a padded room wont help, so Ken takes Lung home. Both Ken and Lung return to Hong Kong to meet Ho and Kit. Now these four men plan to finish Ko and his counterfeiting business for good.
Review: Now this is a gunplay flick. After seeing this film my emotions were mixed with shock, righteousness & sorrow. The gunplay action in the film was great, some great moments, John Woo & Ching Siu-Tung were more than impressive. The action seemed more gritty than the past A Better Tomorrow, with their being a lot more action scenes. Scenes such as Chow Yun-Fat and Dean Shek in the Hotel. Even the final battle in Ko’s home was stunning.
The acting, after seeing this film I’ve become a even bigger fan of both Ti Lung and Leslie Cheung, even Kenneth Tsang impressed me. Who impressed me the most was Dean Shek, after only seeing him in films such as ‘Snake In The Eagles Shadow’ or ‘They Came To Rob Hong Kong’ I didn’t think he would impress me. Boy was I wrong, the scenes with him and Chow Yun-Fat was fab. Chow Yun-Fat also seemed to be a slice of comic relief in the film with him using the explosives.
Final thoughts, a stunning piece of heroic bloodshed from John Woo which is a warm welcome to the A Better Tomorrow Trilogy.
