THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS. It's obvious that a lot of people only like Woo's films for the action, and that's fine--nobody before or since has come close to equaling Woo's mastery of action choreography when he was in his prime. But if you look deeper, there's also some meaning to his films.
Woo's oeuvre is very much concerned with morality. All of his films deal with issues like the gray area between good and bad, whether loyalty to one's family or one's profession ought to take precedence, the extent to which actions determine one's character, and so on. People criticize his movies for featuring protagonists which leap around in ridiculous ways, shooting endless bullets, never having to reload. They're missing the point, because Woo doesn't care at all for realism. He is more interested in creating a sort of superhero mythology featuring more or less real-life characters that use extreme violence as a means of self-realization and working out moral issues.
Anyway, although A Better Tomorrow doesn't actually feature all that many action scenes (although the ones that are here are really good, especially the scene in the restaurant) it's still somehow my favorite of his Hong Kong films. It has heart, the acting by Chow Yun-Fat is really great, and for some reason I also really dig the music. I can't really offer good reasons why I like this one better than Hard Boiled and The Killer, because the action is technically better in those two. But I prefer this one.
Woo's oeuvre is very much concerned with morality. All of his films deal with issues like the gray area between good and bad, whether loyalty to one's family or one's profession ought to take precedence, the extent to which actions determine one's character, and so on. People criticize his movies for featuring protagonists which leap around in ridiculous ways, shooting endless bullets, never having to reload. They're missing the point, because Woo doesn't care at all for realism. He is more interested in creating a sort of superhero mythology featuring more or less real-life characters that use extreme violence as a means of self-realization and working out moral issues.
Anyway, although A Better Tomorrow doesn't actually feature all that many action scenes (although the ones that are here are really good, especially the scene in the restaurant) it's still somehow my favorite of his Hong Kong films. It has heart, the acting by Chow Yun-Fat is really great, and for some reason I also really dig the music. I can't really offer good reasons why I like this one better than Hard Boiled and The Killer, because the action is technically better in those two. But I prefer this one.