A Better Tomorrow Trilogy: The John Woo Films That Invented Heroic Bloodshed

Few films changed the shape of Hong Kong cinema as decisively as John Woo's A BETTER TOMORROW (1986). Before it, the crime genre was mostly cops and small-time hoods; after it, Hong Kong action cinema had a new grammar entirely - slow-motion gunfights, twin pistols, doves in flight, and a fierce, almost operatic code of brotherhood and honour among men on the wrong side of the law. The genre it launched became known as "heroic bloodshed," and it made a global star of a jobbing actor named Chow Yun-fat almost overnight.

Nearly forty years on, all three films in the saga - the original, its 1987 sequel, and Tsui Hark's 1989 prequel - are collected together in one boxset, and it's the perfect way to experience where so much of modern action cinema, from Quentin Tarantino to John Wick, actually started.

A BETTER TOMORROW (1986)

Directed by John Woo. Starring Ti Lung, Leslie Cheung and Chow Yun-fat.

Ho (Ti Lung) is a triad counterfeiter betrayed by one of his own men and sent to prison. On his release, he tries to go straight and reconcile with his estranged younger brother Kit (Leslie Cheung) - now, awkwardly, a police officer who resents everything Ho stands for. Standing beside Ho throughout is Mark (Chow Yun-fat), his loyal partner-in-crime, in the role that made him a star: sunglasses indoors, a lit match to a $100 bill, twin pistols blazing in a hail of shell casings. It's the single image most people picture when they think of Hong Kong action cinema, and it comes from here.

A HUGE box-office success on release, A BETTER TOMORROW didn't just launch John Woo's career - it created an entire genre in its own image.

A BETTER TOMORROW II (1987)

Directed by John Woo, produced and co-written by Tsui Hark. Starring Chow Yun-fat, Ti Lung, Leslie Cheung and Dean Shek.

Mark didn't survive the first film, so Chow Yun-fat returns here as Ken, his American-based twin brother, drawn into a plot of revenge and betrayal alongside Kit and a reformed Ho. It's bigger, bloodier, and more unapologetically operatic than the original - the climactic assault is one of the most extravagant gun battles Woo ever staged, and this boxset presents it in its extended Workprint Cut.

A BETTER TOMORROW III: LOVE AND DEATH IN SAIGON (1989)

Directed by Tsui Hark. Starring Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Ka-fai and Anita Mui.

A prequel rather than a sequel, and the one film in the trilogy not directed by Woo himself. Chow Yun-fat returns as a young Mark, travelling to a Vietnam on the brink of war to bring his family home - and falling for a gun-running nightclub singer played by the great Anita Mui. Traded slow-motion shootouts for wartime melodrama and romance, it's the boxset's wildcard: a different director's take on where this saga's most beloved character came from. This set includes the film's Extended Cut.

Why this trilogy still matters

Without A BETTER TOMORROW, there's no HARD BOILED, no THE KILLER, arguably no Hollywood career for John Woo at all. Its fingerprints are all over Tarantino's filmography, Robert Rodriguez's shootouts, and the entire modern school of stylised gun-fu that runs through to John Wick. This is the boxset for anyone who wants to see where that lineage actually begins - three films, two directors, one iconic character, restored and collected together on 4K UHD and Blu-ray.

Pre-order A Better Tomorrow Trilogy on 4K UHD or on Blu-ray now from Terracotta Distribution.