6.4 | / 10 |
Users | 3.5 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A Korean remake of John Woo's suscessful "A Better Tomorrow", it tells of Hyuk (Jin-mo), who lives the fast life as a high-ranking mobster in Busan, South Korea with his closest pal, fellow mobster Lee Young-Chun (Seung-heon). Hyuk is haunted by the memory of leaving behind his younger brother Chul (Kang-woo) and mother as they attempted to flee into South Korea from North Korea. In a set-up, Hyuk by the police and jailed. Three years later, he is released and travels back to Busan to find his younger brother Chul now a high-ranking police officer. Hyuk tries to earn back the trust of his brother, but rejection and betrayal are hard to forget. Things come to a head when Young-Chun pulls Hyuk into doing one last gig. It happen to be the case that Officer Chul is in charge of, and the three brothers meet again one final time.
Starring: Ju Jin-Mo, Song Seung-heon, Kim Kang-woo, Han-seon Jo, Lee Kyoung-youngForeign | 100% |
Action | 80% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Korean: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Korean: Dolby Digital 2.0
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
DVD copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 5.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Would they ever try remaking Gone With the Wind? (Well, they did, with Raintree County, and we all know how that turned out for them). Or Citizen Kane? Or King Kong? Okay, never mind, I'll stop while I'm not too far behind. But you get the point—classic films are classics for a reason and trying to get the lightning to strike twice is a risky gamble. But more and more the film industry is a wasteland, devoid of new ideas, and so we see remakes trotted out on a virtual weekly basis, remakes which are almost always inferior to their originals. Now John Woo’s 1986 film A Better Tomorrow doesn’t quite attain the giddy heights of classicism that the three films listed above do, but it’s consistently regarded as a trailblazer in its own way, and a film which dramatically raised Woo’s international profile. A Better Tomorrow was a bristling crime action thriller that worked in a a couple of soap operatic elements with regard to its main character, a criminal named Ho, who has a younger brother trying to play it straight and narrow, as well as a partner in crime whose loyalty ends up getting him in both physical and psychological trouble. Did A Better Tomorrow really need to be remade? Probably not, and probably not as this somewhat muddled Korean 2010 version, one which works in the long simmering rivalry between North and South Korea into its plot, while spending as much time on its many supporting characters as it does on the main focal trio of the piece. This 2010 remake, directed by Song Hae-Sung and executive produced by Woo himself, is certainly bigger, glossier and in a way better developed than its progenitor, but it’s also lacking some of the Woo original’s charm and lo-fi allure. In this version the (anti-)hero is Hyuk (Joo Jin-Mo), a North Korean defector who left his younger brother Chul (Kim Kang-Woo) and their mother at the border, where they were arrested and tortured mercilessly, leading to the mother’s death. Hyuk’s buddy Young-Choon (Song Seung-Heon, saddled with the unenviable task of remaking Chow Yun-Fat’s iconic character in the original film) helps to give Hyuk some sense of family since relations with his real brother don’t exactly go swimmingly once they’re reunited as young adults. This A Better Tomorrow takes its time building momentum, and in fact for the first twenty minutes or so some audience members are probably going to be scratching their heads attempting to keep the manifold characters straight, at least until the primary conflict between Hyuk and Chul is introduced.
A Better Tomorrow arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is an uncommonly beautiful film, especially for a crime thriller, and some of the location footage is simply gorgeous to behold. Song and his cinematographer Seung-Ki Kang have an incredible eye for detail and especially for light, and there are a number of really subtly lit scenes here that almost look like color versions of the great noir black and white cinematographers in the U.S. in the late forties and early fifties. Fine detail is exceptional in this presentation, and while many scenes are filtered (some yellow, some blue), overall the palette is extremely varied and robustly displayed, with excellent saturation. Black levels are solid and shadow detail remains strong even in a couple of nighttime sequences. This film's tilt toward amber in several key sequences is incredibly impressive, with contrast pushed just slightly but no fine detail lost in the process. Best of all, there's virtually no artifacting to report, despite some ubiquitous typical problem spots like chain link fences and heavy foliage.
A Better Tomorrow is presented with an incredibly effective lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track in Korean (a lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 mixdown is also available). This is one of the most enjoyable soundtracks in recent memory, with tons of great discrete sound effects zinging around the channels in the set pieces, all of which offer incredible LFE as well. But even the quieter moments of this film are handled very, very well, from virtually the first moment of the film. As Hyuk tosses and turns in bed, haunted by nightmares of his abandoning his brother and mother in North Korea, we get very expert sound effects creating a claustrophobic feeling which really helps to create some tension and helps us to understand the psychological underpinnings of the character. There are a number of great sonic moments sprinkled throughout the film, with both the first big shoot out and the final, apocalyptic showdown being the standouts. Both of these sequences feature nonstop, floorboard rattling LFE and incredibly precise directionality that really help to elevate these moments—almost to the level of a John Woo film.
Why reinvent the wheel? A Better Tomorrow's original version is such an iconic film, despite its flaws (and, yes, it does have some), it seems kind of pointless to revisit it, no matter how well intentioned the filmmakers might have been. This effort certainly has beautiful scenery going for it, as well as a much higher level of production design and flourishes than did Woo's original, but it's also dramatically kind of turgid, too frequently opting for soap opera instead of real drama. It still makes for an interesting companion piece to see alongside of Woo's great original, but I seriously doubt anyone who loves Woo's film is going to feel like this one outdoes it in any way, shape or form.
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