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‘A Better Tomorrow’ (1986) — John Woo’s World Without Women
How John Woo and Wong Kar-Wai offer conflicting visions of masculinity
When Godard was promoting Bande à part (1964), he invoked D.W. Griffith: ‘What do cinemagoers want? A girl and a gun.’ With A Better Tomorrow — whose 40th anniversary is being celebrated with a new 4k restoration and screenings across the US — John Woo discarded the former and added an overwhelming plurality of the latter.
A Better Tomorrow opens with a montage of coolness. Brother Mark (Chow Yun Fat), a gangster running part of a counterfeiting operation, sticks his tongue out at a security camera, makes a popping noise with his cheek at a security guard, burns money as he smokes a cigar indoors — all while wearing sunglasses and a trenchcoat. In Hong Kong, after Tomorrow’s release, young men everywhere donned the style of coat, which they called ‘Mark Gor Lau’ — the name of Chow Yun Fat’s incorrigibly cool gangster character.
The unexpected foundation for all this coolness is how much all these gangsters care about each other. In an early scene, Mark’s chauffeur, Shing (Waise Lee), has a bad cough. Mark notices — Woo makes a point of this noticing — asks if he’s alright, comes over and sticks some money in Shing’s hand, telling him to go see a doctor. Before this gesture, the…
