What is your least favorite scene in ABT2?
Mine would have to be when Dean Shek goes nuts. It was so bad that everyone watching it at my party left, laughing their butts off. They later called to say it was totally f***ing stupid and that we should've watched The Killer instead.
yes, this movie sucked, i only give it a 5 out of 10.
Why are you watching Woo movies for a plot? This movie does what it's suppose to do: deliver two of the best shootouts ever.
share5/10 is an average score (or should be). If you think it "sucked", it would be more appropriate to give it a below average mark, such as a 3.
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How rebellious... in a conformist sort of way.
~ Lisa Simpson
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This is an entertaining movie and it was my favorite woo film (Until I got my own copy of ABT1 and watched it again, now the first one is by far my favorite).
Spoilers (Vague spoilers for both movies)
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My least favorite scene would have to be the birth/death scene just because of its impact on the characters of ABT1. If anyone made it out alive, it should have been him. The rest I could see being killed, perhaps in a rescue attempt for him if he had been injured and taken hostage.
First of all, american audiences and chinese audiences are very different.
Second, yes, Dean Shek is too over the top when he portrays catatonic Ah Lung. I think he should have been just melancholic, sad about the death of his daughter, but he goes crazy, babbling and crawling like a kid.
Still, i would make pay Tsui Hark for that, cause he written it. John Woo, afterall, made a 3 hour A Better Tomorrow 2, but it got axed in the editing room by Tsui Hark, and destroyed the movie.
I believe that John Woo wanted to make a more epic movie that it was. But the bad editing and Dean Shek acting (who John Woo made work in the movie because he had money problems by the time) prevented ABT2 from being the movie it could have been.
It is a good movie, in my opinion. Entertaining, at least. But you still have to look the other way during some parts of the movie, provided you dont mind the premise of Mark having a twin brother, Ken, and never mentioning it before (his best friend Ho doesnt know he exists).
The only great part i really like is when Ken resembles Mark in his way of being, those scenes are the shootout in the hotel (a ripoff of the ending of The Getaway, watch and tell me) and the duel with kong in the destroyed Ko Ying Pui´s mansion.
The action is a step up for Woo, the script is a setback. If only the script was as powerful as Woo´s visual style and the emotions it wants to transmit.
To top that off, Tsui Hark, as always, f**ed it up big time as he only knows to do, by going solo in the direction of ABT3. At least, he now makes movies with Jet Li, and doesnt continue to destroy the career of Chow Yun Fat (though he is doing that by himself, since he stepped in the U.S. of f**king A.)
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I think you almost have to look at Woo's films as fantasy movies shoved into the action genre. He is taking themes of friendship & loyalty & duty & honor that you might find in a samuri film and reflecting those themes through the gun battles. The plot is never what is important, it is the interaction between the characters when they are in these unbelievable situations. Thus, people are going to do stuff that does not make sense and things are going to be weird. In some of his films, it appears that he pays more attention to the plot and that does make the movie better. In others, he really does not seem to care, but I don't think that hurts it. ABT2 is one of the latter, but that does not make it a bad film. ABT2 is what it is... a vehicle to blow stuff up for the sake of blowing stuff up.... from that perspective, it may be one of the best action movie's ever. I thought it was by far the best of the three films and I can watch the end battle endlessly. It obviously does not hit on the emotional level that The Killer does, but it does satisfy some things, namely the desire to see ultra-cool fight scenes that you know Quinten Tarrintino will rip off.
shareI totally agree with you, man...but even if they are fantastic or unbelievable situations, he has a visuals and emotions that better funded movies dont have.
Take care man.
it's a poetic gun battle.
Need i say more?
For those of you who haven't explored Woo's films more deeply, there's a lot more going on than just a dumb coincidence when Chow is brought back as Mark's twin brother. There is symbolism here. Don't believe me? I read in a book about Hong Kong cinema that Woo brings back Chow as Ken to symbolize Mark's resurrection for his heroic deeds in ABT1. He is brought back indirectly for doing the right thing. The same thing happens a bit more blatantly in The Killer and Hard Boiled. Jeffrey is killed in the final battle, but we see him at the end with his harmonica. In Hard Boiled, Tony kills himself so that Tequila can kill Johnny Wong. At the tail end, we see him throwing his paper cranes off his boat as he sails away. These men's survival were not just freak coincidences to please audiences. They were both "resurrected" for their heroic deeds in the line of battle. This is all a combination of traditional Chinese religion and Roman Catholisicm. It's all part of John Woo's message of loyalty and justice. He means for it to happen, and for a good reason.
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To comment on the symbolism in Woo's films, it is something that he mentioned when I attended a week-long showing of a handful of John Woo's best films back in 1996, with him present for a good portion, and also showing unreleased longer edits and so on. I believe the full list of films showed (I saw many of them twice this week, I practically lived at the theatre!) was: ABT, ABT2, Bullet in the Head, The Killer, Hard-Boiled and Once a Thief. I think one night they showed his older films like 'Heroes Shed No Tears' but I might be wrong about that, it was a long time ago.
For the Q&A portion of the event, John Woo mentioned that alot of what he went for was symbolism, and for instance, all of the white in 'The Killer' was highly symbolic for him. He mentioned it had Christian influence but also that in Chinese, white was the color for death. Of course there are obvious connotations of 'innocence lost' with the play of red on white as well, red representing carnal passion or raw emotion, and white the purity of innocence which once lost cannot be recovered. This is but one interpretation of the blood-stained white bandana wrapped around the singer's eyes in The Killer. Taking into account that Woo took the time to point out white's association with death in Chinese culture, though, it may be more to the point that Chow Yun-Fat's character wears white and is himself an embodiment of 'death' - the hitman.
In any case, of the films showed that week, the most stand-out classics to me were A Bullet in the Head, The Killer and Hard Boiled. I also liked ABT1, and Once a Thief was a welcome comic relief thrown in with all the intense triad drama.
But, back to the topic - ABT2. When I watched this film during the John Woo fest it didn't strike me as being particularly memorable, except for the end with a katana. When watching the anime series Cowboy Bebop, ep.5 has an homage to this scene. (Thanks, IMDb-trivia for that info) -- point is, it's certainly a memorable scene! It is actually the one stand-out scene (besides the over-the-top crawling on the ground crying scene) that I can recall quite well. I think at the time I didn't understand the plot so well (or if I did understand it, it must've been forgettable, because I don't remember it) ... but I'm not sure if that matters, really. We're seeing this movie for the emotional tension of triads etc. building up to peaks with massive gun fights. I mean, if the whole movie were like the last scene, it would be boring. But all of the drama, tension and emotional (often over-emtional) acting does have a point-- it builds up to the massive fight scene at the end of the film! So I feel there is a reward to be had, right there, and for that I don't think it's "terrible." Maybe compared to some Woo's work, but it certainly has a few memorable scenes!
And, if we are to take into account the symbolic elements, perhaps the plot can be taken loosely, and we can accept a few plot holes ...
Parts of this flick didn't work and i think Woo makes the drama between characters melodramatic but the final gun battle is beautifull bloodstained cinema poetry.
The guy knows how to stage action and is a true auteur of the genre.
"And in a previous life I did all the laundry for Gengiskhan!"
i think thats kind of imature react i mean it was meant to be sad but you laugh at it. like crazy people really do act like that ive seen my share of it. i guess im overreacting but i guess its cause my twin brother is mentally insane. but i was really sad during that scene for that reason. i didnt think the acting was bad if anything i found it unrealistic having the fact that he recovered in like a month or less. but yeah i think that was a dumb reason to just stop the movie.
shareBefore watching the movie I found it odd that Dean Shek was going to play a guntoting badass because he's more known for playing the creepy weasel-like characters. It later made perfect sense when he was insane throughout most of the movie. Says a lot about the casting.
"My god. I'm a tomato"