"A Better Tomorrow" (1986)

(Originally released as Ying hung boon sik)

Starring: Lung Ti, Leslie Cheung, Chow Yun Fat, Emily Chu, Waise Lee, Fui-On Shing, Kenneth Tsang

First the lowdown: A Hong Kong action takeoff of what would be considered a Pacino/De Niro shtick in America.

Whenever I hear a title like A Better Tomorrow, I think of something I’ll run into on the Lifetime network about a reuniting children reunited after their parent’s tragic divorce or a woman’s harrowing battle with breast cancer. I never thought I’d see Chow Yun fat pumping round after round into an army of Chinese gangsters.

Tomorrow starts off with our two leads, Mark and Ho, who have been tucking away a tidy fortune in a counterfeiting scam. Ho has been carrying on the family tradition from his father, while keeping his younger brother Kit in the dark. Kit is the family pride and joy as he is graduating from the police academy, oh the irony. However, Ho and his father knows that it’s only a matter of time before Kit will find out what he really does for a living, so when the opportunity comes for him to set up shop in Taiwan, Ho jumps on it. But things don’t go as planned overseas and Ho turns himself in to the Taiwanese police to help his partner, Shing, escape.

Back in the Oyster Saucy City, the gang that set Ho up is now pissed because he turned himself in, and decides to kidnap his father to insure that Ho won’t spill his guts in prison. Kit interrupts the kidnapping attempt, but the poor kid gets pummeled so brutally that all he can do is watch his father die. Meanwhile, word of Ho’s imprisonment and the death of his father (who was Mark’s boss) has passed on to Mark, who then enacts his own bloody, bullet-flavored revenge in the first of several scenes that would demonstrate John Woo’s trademark operatic-style action choreography. (It’s scenes like this where I can almost smell the cordite wafting off the screen.) Mark doesn’t go through the hit unscathed, however, and catches a bullet in his ankle. However the shooter gets an entire clip unloaded into his face.

3 years later, Ho is released from prison, Kit is a police inspector, Mark is crippled, and SHING is in control of the old gang. Kit’s boss calls him on the carpet when Ho is released. Because of the new “though on corruption” administration in the police bureau, the boss lets Kit know that any crime syndicate investigations he has are re-assigned to someone without “family ties.” Now pissed that his future in law enforcement has been summarily shit-canned, Kit is now determined more than ever to bust Shing, badge or no badge.

Ho, on the other hand, wants out of the life and has been trying to follow the straight and narrow. He tries to reunite with Kit, but his younger brother wants nothing to do with him and ignores all of Ho’s claims that he has changed. To demonstrate his good faith, Ho follows the advice of a friend on the inside that directs him to Ken, who runs a taxi service that employs ex-cons. Despite the rough beginning, life seems like it may actually be on the uptake for, Ho, when Shing calls him in. When Ho arrives at his old office, he runs into Mark and sees how low he has fallen because of his injury – Mark is now scrubbing windscreens for tips.

Shing wants Ho to work for him again because Ho was an effective businessman and his brother is in the police force. Ho wants nothing to do with it, so he tells Shing where he can stick his offer. Shing is not one to be deterred, however, and arranges an attack on Kit. With Kit in the hospital, Mark and Ho come up with a plan that will not only get Shing out of their hair, but give Kit some breathing space

It’s a great flick and is considered to be John Woo’s seminal film that would separate his directing style from others in Hong Kong. (Having action powerhouse Tsui Hark produce also probably helped.) One of the Tomorrow’s fatal flaws, however, is with Chow Yun Fat, who does a lot of scenery chewing in this film. His character, Mark, is not only secondary to the plot, but every time Mark shows up on screen all attention is diverted to him. It makes me wonder if Mark was originally supposed to the focus of the movie. In fact the two prequels that came after revolve entirely around the character of Mark.

Line of the movie: “I swore I’d never let anyone put a gun to my head again.” Mark needs to find a new job then.

Five stars. Take me home.

"The Sea Inside" (2004)

(Originally released as Mar Adentro.)

Starring: Javier Bardem, Belén Rueda, Lola Dueñas, Mabel Rivera, Celso Bugallo, Clara Segura

First, the lowdown: A quadriplegic fights for his right to die.

Ramon Sampedro wants to die. After a diving accident rendered him quadriplegic, Ramon set his eyes on ending his life to avoid being a further burden to his brother and sister-in-law who care for him. With the assistance of a “death with dignity” charity, he has been petitioning the local governments to be allowed to terminate his life, but given his condition, that would mean someone else would have to assist him, making that person a murderer in the eyes of the law.

A lawyer, Julia, agrees to take on Ramon’s case pro bono. But Julia’s intentions are more selfish than most other realize: Julia suffers from a degenerative neurological disorder that makes every step a walking minefield. Her walking already hampered by the loss of one leg, Julia knows that as her condition progresses she could go blind – or worse. Julia seeks to end her life too because she is weary of living in fear of what the next day may take away from her.

Rosa, a local girl, sees an interview with Ramon and is intrigued by a man who wants to kill himself, but doesn’t want to be pitied or judged. Filled with good intentions, Rosa visits Ramon with the naïve hope that she can talk him out of his quest to end his life, but instead is frustrated by Ramon’s tightly knit (and somewhat abrasive) intelligence. However, she does not let that dissuade her from wanting to help Ramon.

For a movie that is highly politically charged, there isn’t too much soap-boxing done. Most political discussions are derailed by Ramon’s sly wit and uncompromising philosophy. A very telling scene has a Jesuit priest, also a quadriplegic, arriving at Ramon’s house to debate, only to be unable to reach Ramon’s bedroom because his wheelchair won’t fit up the stairwell. The debate is carried out by one of the priest’s aides, who has to jog up and down a flight of stairs to pass messages between the two men.

One other thing that is interesting to note about this film: while the film is ultimately about a man’s desire to end his life on his own terms, most of the movie goes into the celebration of life and of hope. Rosa loses her job because of a factory closure, but still finds strength of her own. Gene, a woman with the “death with dignity” charity, falls in love with Marc, a lawyer in Julia’s firm, and the two have a child together. Even Ramon’s sister-in-law overlooks his desire for death because she loves caring for him.

When I started watching this movie I kept sighing, “There’s no way this would’ve been released in America.” Euthanasia is a hot button issue over here, and like all hot-button issues, it is used as a means to garner votes rather than address cultural ramifications. If anything, the incident involving Terri Schiavo only served to underscore what lengths politicians will go to in order to push forward their own selfish agendas and had nothing to do with morality. One point that the movie presses forward is: if a person does not have the right to end his or her own life, who does that life belong to then?

Line of the movie: “When you can't escape, and you constantly rely on everyone else, you learn to cry by smiling, you know?”

Five stars. Oh the tintinnabulation of the bells.

"The Accidenal Spy" (2001)

Starring: Jackie Chan, Eric Tsang, Vivian Hsu, Min-Jeong Kim, Hsing-Kuo Wu, Alfred Cheung, Tony Jones

First, the lowdown: Jackie Chan plays an average guy with kung-fu training thrust into the seamy world of international espionage. Natch.

What is it about Jackie Chan movies where even a shtick plot doesn’t seem like a shtick? Jackie Chan plays, erm, Jackie Chan: mild-mannered fitness equipment salesman. After foiling a bank robbery, Jackie is contacted by a loser PI with a bad combover who has the astonishing speech impediment of being unable to give a direct answer when questioned. Apparently a lawyer whose duty it is to find the long-lost son of a Korean agent has hired the loser PI. Jackie ends up going to Seoul to see the wizened old dude (who looks only to be 5 years older than Jackie at most), only to find out that the man had set up an elaborate game he wanted to play with Jackie. But before Jackie can ask him what the hell he’s talking about, a reporter with a cute ass approaches Jackie to see if there’s anything he can tell her about his late father. She reveals that the man was a double agent who probably would be ending up on the slab one of these days anyway. When he returns to visit Dad again, a trio of faceless thugs is roughing up the old guy. This only serves to get the plot moving and provide Jackie with one of the best uses for a defibrillator unit I’ve seen since Short Circuit 2. After getting a $10,000 chunk of the man’s estate, Jackie takes the old man up on his offer for a game. This guy must’ve either been REALLY bored or had a lot of time on his hands, because it leads Jackie all the way to Istanbul (okay, fine NOT Constantinople, oh the shame). In a Turkish bank, Jackie unlocks the safety deposit box that contains a gajillion dollars and a copy of Gideon’s bible. He hasn’t left the bank for more than five minutes, however, when the taxi he’s riding in gets forced into a vacant lot and an entire platoon of faceless thugs try to beat him up and rifle thru his suitcase full of moolah. But they aren’t interested in the cash and quickly flee when the authorities arrive. Seemingly unshaken by the botched mugging, Jackie is determined to go sight seeing. Whilst in a Turkish bath, he is set upon by yet another group of Turkish thugs who are trying to make some kind of demand from him, but because of an obvious language barrier, nothing gets accomplished. So another fight ensues, with Jackie losing his towel in the middle of a Turkish bazaar, causing him to use extreme measures to make sure his “little dragon” is covered. (Gotta admit, though, Jackie’s got a nice ass.) Furthermore, Jackie’s concerns as to why he’s being chased are waylaid when running into mysterious cutie Yong distracts him. Yong sets up a dinner date with him, but at that moment the cute-assed reporter approaches him again. This time a CIA agent who divulges even more highly classified material about his late Dad accompanies her. Apparently Dad was big into the whole drug thing and had been developing a kind of “super-heroin” in cooperation with a huge Hong Kong drug czar (who, fortunately, is based out of Turkey as well). One of the Drug Czar’s connections is Yong, who the Cute-Assed reporter and CIA Spook hope will lead Jackie to the head man himself. Jackie finally follows up with his dinner date only to be attacked by yet another group of faceless Turkish thugs. This time they kidnap Jackie and Yong and begin grilling Jackie again in Turkish, oblivious to the fact that a common language is required to get anything out of an interrogation. The brutal inquisition is interrupted by what looks like a group of Korean green berets, and in the confusion Jackie and Yong escape using the most Jackie Chan way possible (an overly elaborate Goldberg device that causes 6-digit property damage figures). During their flight from captivity, Jackie learns that Yong was a misguided orphan who quickly fell into the deep abyss of heroin abuse; but before we can get any further into that plot-line, the Drug Czar picks them up and tells Jackie that in exchange for the “super-heroin” that his Dad has made, he can get a big chunk o’ change and take care of Yong. Jackie, being the softy he is, agrees and before he can even enjoy an evening of “I just bought your freedom” sex, Yong collapses from withdrawal in a train station. Now Jackie’s pissed, and the CIA’s pissed at Jackie for giving the Drug Czar his Dad’s package (maybe you shoulda nabbed it when you had the chance, superspy?). So, Jackie ends up retrieving the package in the only way he knows how: with an over-long stunt-filled chase sequence.

Line of the movie: “I should let you rot in that Turkish prison!” CIA spooky rips poor Jackie a new one.

Three and a half stars. Boil water and stir.

"The Chorus" (2004)

(Originally released as Les Choristes)

Starring: Gérard Jugnot, François Berléand, Kad Merad, Jean-Paul Bonnaire, Marie Bunuel

First, the lowdown: A prefect at a boarding school disciplines his charges through music.

What is it about foreign cinema where they can take a stale genre picture and breathe life into it? The Chorus is a remake of an earlier French film, La Cage Aux Rossignols, and the consensus is that it’s improved upon that film in many respects.

Clément is a former music teacher who has been hired as a boarding school prefect. The year is 1949, and many of the students are indirect victims from World War II. (One student, Pépinot, had lost his parents during the occupation.) Nobody wants to be there: the boys don’t, the teachers don’t, and the headmaster certainly doesn’t. Clément is happy to have a job, however, and is undeterred by the boy’s lack of discipline.

Rachin, the headmaster’s philosophy of order is reduced to a single phrase: “action/reaction.” This attitude is demonstrated when Clément arrives: the groundskeeper Maxence is injured from a student prank, when no one comes forward about it, Rachin tells Clément to pick a boy at random to punish (being new, Clément won’t have any existing prejudices.)

Clément does not like the abusive manner in which Rachin enforces his policies, but knows that the boys’ misdeeds cannot go unpunished. After tracking down the true culprit behind Maxence’s injury, Clément negotiates to have the boy be Maxence’s aide until he recovers. In exchange, Clément vows to keep the matter from Rachin. Word spreads quickly, and the boys find themselves unsure: this is the first time a teacher had treated them like adults instead of miscreants.

One evening, before bedtime, Clément catches the boys chanting an insulting ditty about him in their dormitory. Becoming inspired, Clément begins teaching his students how to sing and assembles them as a choir. Now having a means to express themselves, the students act out against their superiors less and less. One student in particular, Morhange, proves to be a gifted soprano, even though he is embarrassed by his talent.

If the plot sounds familiar (music instructor takes a group of ruffians and turns them in to the greatest children’s choir ever) it’s because you’ve seen it a million times before. But here it looks entirely original, and rarely comes off as being too sugary. One way that this movie excels beyond it’s American counterparts is that all of the characters are three-dimensional, not just the ones with the most screen time.

Line of the movie: “Is there a truth sweeter than hope?”

Four and a half stars. If your back is slouchy, your face looks grouchy.