A Better Tomorrow spawned two sequels and a number of knock-offs. Woo himself kept upping the ante with each gun fu film that followed: The Killer, Hard Boiled, and City on Fire all replete with stylized action and sentimentality -- all dripping with blood and morality. That was Woo's contribution to Hong Kong cinema: the taking of the action genre's mindless shoot-'em-ups and blending it with the kung fu genre's insistence on the discipline and morality of its protagonist, while throwing in some melodramatic, sentimental, moralistic tones inspired by Chinese culture's deep religious and philosophical traditions. It made for a fine and elegant slop that only the most visionary of directors, like Woo, could pull off. So many threads to keep together at once is not easily achieved -- and over-indulgence in any one thread line would yield less than stellar results, as Woo's ill-advised Paycheck showed. The glue that could keep them all together, of course, was bullets -- lots and lots of bullets: the one ingredient that any modern action film needed. With Woo's trademark gun fu delivery, the bullets were sure to keep flying -- and, as A Better Tomorrow showed, there was no time like shootout time for characters to come to grips with themselves and finally understand their fellow man.
Additionally, Better Tomorrow's climax is one of the ways that Woo's film, and much of Hong Kong cinema, mimics the West with easy solutions to complex and dramatic problems. Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle, for example, is an homage to Hollywood, with references to Kubrick's Shining, to the noir films of the 20th century, to The Three Stooges and so on. Jackie Chan's films drew inspiration from Buster Keaton, and Woo likewise drew inspiration from Western cinema -- from filmmakers like Hitchcock and Scorsese (Pierce). All of these filmmakers likewise had an impact on the West -- Woo especially, whose Better Tomorrow and its introduction of gun fu into the action genre inspired Western filmmakers from Robert Rodriguez to Oliver Stone to Quentin Tarantino to the Wachowskis ("John Woo's Influence on American Films").
A look at some of the films that were inspired by Woo's gun fu style that first hit the screen in Better Tomorrow include: Robert Rodriguez's Desperado (1995) about a loner guitar player seeking revenge on bad guys in Mexico. The hero of the film, played by Antonio Banderas, uses gun fu (a gun in both hands, arms fully extended, in shootouts where he alone is pitted against a slew of enemies) to accomplish his heroics. Keenan Ivory Wayans imitates Mark Gor directly in A Low Down Dirty Shame when he dons a black trench coat and sunglasses -- a look that the Wachowskis would pilfer for The Matrix as well. In the movies, everyone pilfers from everyone when a trend hits and audiences respond to it -- and that is certainly what happened with Better Tomorrow: Hong Kong audiences made it a box office smash, and Western movie lovers were quick to take note of the John Woo gun fu style that was revamping the action genre. In this manner, the flow between the East and the West was made that much more meaningful as both movie industries -- Western and Hong Kong -- were seen to be watching one another and taking inspiration from what the other was doing. Stone's Natural Born Killers modeled its shootout scenes on Woo's gun fu style. Tarantino took Woo's gun fu and brought it to American audiences in Reservoir Dogs. Even James Bond got in on the gun fu style of action in Tomorrow Never Dies -- the title of which could be read as a direct reference to Woo's very first gun fu film with Chow Yun Fat ("John Woo's Influence on American Films").
Indeed, part of Better Tomorrow's enormous appeal was breakout star Chow Yun Fat's performance as Mark Gor: dynamic, handsome, fearless, cool, and sexy, Mark waltzed and winced, smiled and gritted his teeth across the screen like an Asian Cary Grant kind of gun slinger. Chow Yun Fat exuded the cool confidence that made Americans fall in love with Grant in the first half of the 20th century. What Grant did for American cinema, Yun Fat did for Hong Kong action cinema. His appeal would spread across the Pacific as well: Yun Fat would go on to star in a number of Hollywood films, such as The Replacement Killers, Anna…
John Woo's Face/Off John Woo's 1997 Face/Off was only the Hong Kong filmmaker's third American feature, preceded by Hard Target (1993) starring Jean-Claude van Damme and Broken Arrow (1996) starring Christian Slater and John Travolta. Travolta would star again in Woo's third Hollywood effort alongside Nicholas Cage. The film's solid success with critics and at the box-office would move Tom Cruise to hire Woo to helm the second installment of
East/West An Analysis of Eastern Influence in Western Art The American/English poet T.S. Eliot references the Upanishad in his most famous poem "The Wasteland," a work that essentially chronicles the break-up of Western civilization and looks to Eastern philosophy for a kind of crutch in the wake of the abandonment of Western philosophy. Since then, Westerners, whether in literature or in film, have continued to look to the East for inspiration and
it's been earned" (emphasis added) (Klawans, 2003, p. 32). In their synopsis of the movie, the producers report that, "Having been gunned down by her former boss (David Carradine) and his deadly squad of international assassins, it's a kill-or-be-killed fight she didn't start but is determined to finish! Loaded with explosive action and outrageous humor, it's a must-see motion picture event that had critics everywhere raving!" (Kill Bill Volume