A Better Tomorrow III: Love & Death in Saigon

John Woo is no longer at the helm in this the third Better Tomorrow installment and it shows. We still get Chow Yun Fat, but the aura of “cool” is absent. This is a prequel, so perhaps he hadn’t learned how to be cool yet, What we do get is a corny love triangle that develops against the backdrop of the fall of Saigon. It’s not a bad movie per se, but it definitely is not what one would expect from A Better Tomorrow. Woo’s gun-fu was never exactly realistic but its fantastical violence was musical and romanticized. Hark’s action is just plain goofy. Still fun to watch, but goofy and really should have been its own thing.