As John Woo’s landmark 1986 film tours US cinemas in 4K restoration, its story of honour, loyalty, and sacrifice resonates with new force in a city that has paid a terrible price for those values
The Film That Made Hong Kong Cinema a Global Force Returns
Forty years after it changed action cinema forever, John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow is back on American screens, newly restored in 4K and touring the United States and Canada as part of a Hong Kong Cinema Classics retrospective presented by Shout Studios and GKIDS. Beginning at the American Cinematheque and the IFC Center in August 2025, the programme continues throughout 2026 with the film scheduled to appear on approximately 800 screens across three dates in March, accompanied by a new pre-recorded interview with Woo. It is a remarkable second life for a film that defined a generation and a genre, and its renewed visibility in 2026 carries a poignancy that its makers could not have anticipated four decades ago.
Released in Hong Kong on 2 August 1986, A Better Tomorrow was born out of frustration and creative hunger. John Woo, then specialising in Jackie Chan-style comedies for major studios, had spent years trying and failing to persuade studios to let him make a serious crime film. With producer Tsui Hark and the backing of Cinema City, he finally got his chance. The film was shot on a budget of under HK$11 million. Nobody expected much. The studio assumed it would be a commercial failure. Instead, it grossed over HK$34 million during its theatrical run, broke Hong Kong box office records, and launched a genre — heroic bloodshed — that would shape action cinema worldwide for decades.
The Story: Brotherhood, Honour, and the Cost of Loyalty
At its heart, A Better Tomorrow is a film about what men owe each other and what society owes the individual. Ti Lung plays Ho, a triad member involved in counterfeiting who goes to prison after a betrayal. His younger brother Kit, played by a young Leslie Cheung, is a police officer who resents him. Chow Yun-fat plays Mark, Ho’s fiercely loyal friend, who suffers devastating consequences for standing by the people he loves while Ho is incarcerated.
What made the film revolutionary was not just its stylised gunplay — the balletic, slow-motion choreography that would become Woo’s signature — but the emotional intensity of its moral universe. In a world of double-crosses and decaying values, Mark and Ho represent a code of honour and brotherhood that the film treats as genuinely heroic. The film is simultaneously a genre exercise and a meditation on what it means to remain human and dignified in a world that punishes those qualities. Chow Yun-fat’s Mark, lighting cigarettes with burning banknotes, strolling into gunfights with matchless cool, became an icon. Teenagers across Hong Kong copied the long trench coat he wore. Sales of the Alain Delon sunglasses the character favoured sold out across the city. Alain Delon himself sent Chow a personal thank-you note.
The Genre It Created, the World It Influenced
A Better Tomorrow did not merely succeed. It created a template. The heroic bloodshed genre it launched — characterised by outrageous gun battles, intense male bonding, themes of loyalty and betrayal, and a romantic attitude toward violence — generated dozens of imitators and several masterpieces. Woo’s own follow-up films, including The Killer in 1989 and Hard-Boiled in 1992, are among the greatest action films ever made. Directors from Quentin Tarantino to Robert Rodriguez to the Wachowskis have cited Woo’s influence on their work. The Matrix, with its bullet-time sequences and philosophical gangster aesthetics, is unthinkable without A Better Tomorrow and its successors.
Beyond cinema, A Better Tomorrow embedded itself in popular culture. The Wu-Tang Clan named a song after it. Quentin Tarantino famously dressed like Chow Yun-fat’s Mark for weeks after seeing the film. A Korean remake, an Indian unofficial adaptation, and a 2010 official Korean language version further demonstrate the film’s extraordinary transnational reach.
A Better Tomorrow in 2026: The Hong Kong That Made It No Longer Exists
Watching A Better Tomorrow in 2026 is an experience overlaid with historical sorrow. The Hong Kong it depicts — chaotic, dangerous, gloriously alive, a city where individual codes of honour could still find expression and where the streets contained multitudes — is a Hong Kong that no longer exists in the same form. The national security laws imposed since 2020 have fundamentally altered the city’s character. The cinemas, studios, and distribution networks that produced the Hong Kong New Wave of the 1980s and 1990s have been hollowed out. Many of the directors, actors, and creative professionals who made Hong Kong cinema great have left or fallen silent.
The themes of A Better Tomorrow — loyalty in the face of betrayal, the price of standing by your values in a hostile world, the question of what kind of future is worth fighting for — resonate with uncomfortable precision when mapped onto the experience of Hong Kong’s democracy movement. The activists who refused to abandon their principles, who paid severe personal costs to stand by what they believed was right, would recognise something of themselves in Woo’s characters. The title itself — A Better Tomorrow — names exactly what Hong Kong’s democracy advocates have been fighting for and what Beijing has been working to deny them. For those who wish to see the restored film, the Shout Studios website has details on the US theatrical release and home video availability. The Hong Kong International Film Festival, which has long celebrated the best of Hong Kong cinema, provides an essential platform for preserving and presenting the heritage that films like A Better Tomorrow represent. The Criterion Collection’s Hong Kong titles offer another window into the extraordinary period of creativity that produced some of the greatest films in the history of cinema — a heritage that deserves protection and celebration as intensely as any political freedom.
Sin Yu Mak
Business & Consumer Affairs Journalist, Apple Daily UK
Contact: sinyu.mak@appledaily.uk
Sin Yu Mak is a business and consumer affairs journalist with expertise in market regulation, consumer rights, and small enterprise reporting. She completed her journalism education at a respected Chinese journalism institution, where she trained in economic reporting, data literacy, and ethical standards.
Her professional experience includes reporting for Apple Daily and other liberal Chinese newspapers on consumer protection, corporate practices, retail trends, and financial transparency. Sin Yu’s work emphasizes accurate interpretation of financial data and regulatory frameworks, supported by expert commentary and verified documentation.
She has operated in fast-paced newsroom settings where financial misinformation can cause real harm, giving her strong practical experience in verification and clarity. Editors value her ability to translate technical information into accessible, fact-based reporting.
Sin Yu’s authority is reinforced by consistent publication within reputable media organizations and compliance with editorial review processes. At Apple Daily UK, she delivers trustworthy business journalism rooted in evidence, professional discipline, and public-interest reporting.
