A Better Tomorrow () is a 1986 Hong Kong action film directed and produced by John Woo, with a screenplay by Woo, Chan Hing-ka, and Leung Suk-wah. The film stars Ti Lung, Leslie Cheung, Chow Yun-fat, Emily Chu, and Waise Lee. Ti plays Ho, a triad gangster and money counterfeiter who is sent to prison after being betrayed by his subordinate, Shing (Lee). After his release, Ho tries to reform himself and reconcile with his estranged brother Kit (Cheung), a police officer who resents him for his criminal past. Ho becomes torn between trying and failing to make amends with Kit, and following the advice of his friend Mark (Chow) to seek revenge for Shing's treachery.
The plot was heavily influenced by The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (1967), a film admired by both Woo and producer Tsui Hark. After forming Film Workshop in 1984, Tsui asked Woo to write and direct a dramatic crime film. Woo saw this as his chance to break away from directing comedies for Cinema City and developed the story based on Discharged Prisoner, adding his own ideas about honour and loyalty inspired by wuxia and the work of Jean-Pierre Melville. After convincing Cinema City to co-produce, Woo and Tsui began filming in early 1986, working with a budget of under . The majority of filming took place in Hong Kong, with some exterior shots filmed in Taiwan, and concluded after 80 to 100 days.
Released during a time when comedy films were popular in Hong Kong, Cinema City was expecting A Better Tomorrow to be a box-office bomb due to its dramatic tone and lack of a popular cast. However, it defied expectations and achieved immediate commercial success upon its release on 2 August 1986, earning over during its extended theatrical run. Critics praised the action sequences, Woo's direction, and the performances of its cast. The film was nominated for numerous accolades, winning two Hong Kong Film Awards and three Golden Horse Awards.
A Better Tomorrow has been influential on action films since its release. Its stylised, balletic gunplay is considered the original source of gun fu fight sequences. The movie's popularity led Hong Kong film producers to introduce more melodramatic elements into their crime films, leading to the emergence of the heroic bloodshed film genre. A Better Tomorrow is considered by critics to be one of the greatest action movies, with a Hong Kong Film Awards panel ranking it second in its list of The Best 100 Chinese Motion Pictures in 2005. Its box office success spawned a direct sequel, A Better Tomorrow II (1987), a prequel entitled A Better Tomorrow III: Love & Death in Saigon (1989), and two official remakes: one in South Korea released in 2010 and one in mainland China in 2018.
Plot
Triad member Ho and his best friend, Mark Lee, run a money counterfeiting business for their boss, Mr. Yiu. This activity is kept secret from Ho's younger brother Kit, a police cadet. Out of respect for their ailing father, Ho promises to stop being a gangster after completing his next business deal. At Mr. Yiu's request, Ho lets a subordinate named Shing accompany him to Taiwan to conduct business with a local mob. However, the gang ambushes them, causing a shootout that alerts the Taiwanese police. Ho tells Shing to escape while he surrenders. To ensure Ho doesn't implicate anyone, the Taiwanese gang sends a kidnapper to abduct his father. In the scuffle between Kit, his girlfriend Jackie, and the kidnapper, Ho and Kit's father is fatally stabbed. Before he dies, the father begs Kit to forgive his brother, but a furious Kit blames Ho for their father's death. Mark travels to Taiwan to exact revenge on the gangsters, shooting them dead in a restaurant. However, he is shot twice in his right leg, leaving him crippled and needing a leg brace to walk.
Ho is released from prison after serving a three-year sentence. Determined to start anew, he gets a job driving for a taxi company run by ex-convict Ken. Ho finds out that Shing has climbed the ranks of the triad during his imprisonment, usurping Mark's position and status. He is devastated to learn that Mark, who had hidden the extent of his condition in his letters to Ho, has been cast aside by Shing after becoming disabled. Not wanting to be dragged back into crime, Ho refuses to confront his former protégé, opting to try and reconcile with Kit. However, Kit resents the fact that his familial connection to Ho is preventing his promotion at work. In an effort to prove to his superiors that he can be trusted, Kit becomes obsessed with bringing down Shing, despite Ho's warnings.
Hoping to expand the triad's operations into drug trafficking, Shing tries to persuade Ho to rejoin the triad. He tells Ho that they stand to make a lot of money if Kit is turned into a corrupt policeman. When Ho refuses, Shing has his men raid the taxi company, beat Mark nearly to death, and shoot Kit after luring him into a trap. After Mark and Ho narrowly escape arrest, Mark pleads with Ho to stand up for himself and fight Shing. Fed up with his friend's unwillingness, Mark steals a computer tape containing printing plate data from the counterfeiting business. Having a change of heart, Ho shows up on a motorbike to collect the tape. After using it to ransom Shing for and an escape boat to leave Hong Kong on, Ho transfers the tape to Kit to use as proof of Shing's crimes.
Through a conversation with Mr. Yiu, Shing reveals that he was the one who set up the ambush in Taiwan. After lying to his boss about a negotiation with Ho, Shing kills Mr. Yiu, coercing the witnesses to frame Ho as the murderer. At the ransom exchange site, Ho and Mark take Shing hostage and drive to a pier, where the boat is guarded by Shing's men. Ho implores Mark to escape by himself in the boat. Kit arrives to arrest Shing, but is taken hostage by the gangster's men. The two parties try to exchange Shing for Kit, but it quickly falls apart into a shootout. Hearing the sound of gunfire, Mark comes back to help, and the three of them kill most of Shing's henchmen. After seeing Kit rebuff his brother again, Mark berates him, telling him that Ho's present actions have made up for his criminal past. Mid-speech, Mark is shot from behind and killed by Shing and his remaining enforcer.
Ho kills Shing's last henchman, but runs out of ammunition as the police approach. Shing mocks the two brothers, stating that his money and influence will ensure his swift release from custody. Finally forgiving his brother, Kit hands Ho his revolver, and Ho shoots Shing dead. As redemption for his crimes, Ho handcuffs himself to Kit, and the two walk towards the gathered crowd of police together.
Cast
Additionally, the film also includes cameo appearances from Woo, who plays a Taiwanese policeman named Inspector Wu, and Tsui as a music judge.
Production
Conception
The primary inspiration for A Better Tomorrow was Patrick Lung's The Story of a Discharged Prisoner (1967), a film which John Woo and Tsui Hark both greatly admired. According to film critic , Woo had witnessed Lung directing the movie at ; Tsui meanwhile, had seen it as a teenager and was impressed by the film's handling of social issues. Lung's movies eventually influenced Tsui to venture into filmmaking by creating short films. Throughout his career, Tsui kept Discharged Prisoner on his mind, and considered making a dramatic work inspired by it. He first suggested an adaptation of Lung's film in the mid-1970s while working at TVB, but his idea was ignored. Years later, Tsui would propose a similar project to the studio he was contracted with, Cinema City. Due to Cinema City's commercial success with formulaic comedies, they refused, stating that local audiences would not want to watch such a serious movie.
Undeterred by the rejection, Tsui founded the production company Film Workshop in April 1984 with his wife, Nansun Shi. Tsui then approached his friend Woo, who had helped kickstart his directing career by getting him initial contract work with Cinema City, to come write and direct a gangster film. Woo himself had been feeling burnt out while working in Taiwan for Cinema City. He had originally signed with the studio in hopes of getting more directorial freedom, but had instead been shunted into doing administrative work, stopping only to churn out a couple of company-mandated comedies for money. Woo was frustrated by his potential future, as he had desperately wanted to make a gangster film instead. In a 2025 interview with Variety, he stated, "Before A Better Tomorrow, I didn't have much chance to try this kind of a style. Because I never got any support from the studio or anyone, I wasn't able to experiment." Intrigued by Tsui's offer, he came back to Hong Kong in 1985, but was surprised by a perceived cultural shift when he arrived. Woo noted that there had been "gangster infiltration into all kinds of businesses—even the film industry—and a widespread feeling that there were no morals left, that many people would do anything to get ahead." Taken aback by this, Woo decided that he would direct a film that would bring back and highlight "true values, like honour and chivalry".
Writing and development
Inspired by Jean-Pierre Melville, Woo began writing A Better Tomorrow with the goal of making it his own version of Le Samouraï (1967). Encouraged by Tsui to draw upon his own personal experiences to write the film's dialogue, Woo considered A Better Tomorrow to be his first auteur movie. He meant for the film to be a way for him to express his feelings about Hong Kong and human dignity, and didn't intend for it to be a political statement. Woo also wanted it to showcase his friendship with Tsui, since both men had helped each other gain a foothold in their respective directing careers.
Woo was influenced by the gallant tales of wuxia, remarking that films like A Better Tomorrow "are violent, but they also have an element of romance—not love, but chivalry—and there's always the dream of a better world." He noted the impact that a previous directorial effort, Last Hurrah for Chivalry (1979), had on him, calling it a prequel to A Better Tomorrow. While Woo used the basic plot of The Story of a Discharged Prisoner as the foundation for his film, including copying the Chinese title directly, he made specific changes to the story's characters. Woo turned the younger brother into a police officer in order to heighten the drama between the siblings, and reworked the original film's social worker character to be Mark. Since Woo was a fan of Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955), he wrote Kit to be an homage to James Dean's character. More notably, most of the characters in the original were rewritten to be male roles, despite Tsui's request to include female protagonists. Tsui admitted that there was friction between him and Woo, stating that from a production standpoint: "I get too involved in the project, and there is not enough room for some directors to breathe. John Woo is very much independent."
In addition to Woo, and Leung Suk-wah () also received writing credits for the screenplay. Chan was enlisted by one of the film's production managers, who remembered his work co-writing the TVB television series The Battle Among the Clans (1985). His primary screenplay contribution was introducing a romantic relationship between Kit and Jackie, as Woo and Tsui wanted the younger characters in the film to get more screen time. For the film's English title, Woo asked Nansun Shi for a phrase that better reflected the film's themes of redemption and courage, shortening her suggestion of "For a Better Tomorrow".
Once Woo agreed to direct and have Tsui handle production duties, Tsui was able to persuade Cinema City to finance the movie despite the poor box office performance of Woo's previous films. Film executive Karl Maka approved the project after being convinced of its concept and marketability. Joining Woo on the production was editor Ma Kam () and cinematographer Wong Wing-hang (). Blackie Ko and Stephen Tung were hired as the film's action designers. Patrick Leung was the assistant director to Woo. For the art direction, Woo employed Bennie Lui (), who was assisted by Tim Yip. Yip was a 21-year-old photographer who Tsui recommended after the producer saw his photography work in an exhibition.
Casting
While Tsui had wanted to include women in the movie's leading roles—he expressed interest in getting Michelle Yeoh to play a female version of Mark—the film was greenlit based on the selection of three male leads: Chow Yun-fat, Ti Lung, and Leslie Cheung. In an interview with Apple Daily, Raymond Wong Pak-ming, a co-founder of Cinema City, said that the role of Mark had initially been offered to George Lam. However, Lam declined as he was already working for . According to the Hong Kong Economic Times, Mark Cheng was next considered, but he was unavailable as he was filming Tsui's Peking Opera Blues (1986). Instead, Woo considered casting Chow, believing that his talent, charisma, and off-screen generosity would be perfect for the role of "a modern knight". However, Cinema City initially balked at the proposal. While Chow was a popular television actor for TVB, his film roles had been so commercially unsuccessful that he had developed an industry reputation as "box office poison". Anchor Bay later released A Better Tomorrow and its sequel as a box set on 2 March 2004. In the United Kingdom, a DVD titled A Better Tomorrow Collector's Edition was first released on 30 December 2002. Another Region 2 DVD release by Optimum Asia was released on 26 June 2006. The two-disc package contained a 90-minute cut of the film presented in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, with additional features like audio commentary, a trailer, and a documentary on Woo called Crossings.
Following these releases, the film was never released on Blu-ray or streaming services outside of Asia for nearly two decades due to licensing issues. However, after announcing in January 2025 that they had acquired worldwide rights from Golden Princess Film Production, Shout! Studios gave A Better Tomorrow and its sequels a digital release on 8 July of that year. Shout! also included the film as one of the titles shown on a new free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channel of theirs called Hong Kong Fight Club. In October 2025, The Criterion Collection added A Better Tomorrow to their video on demand (VOD) streaming service, The Criterion Channel. Shout! released a seven-disc box set containing both 4K and Blu-ray versions of the entire A Better Tomorrow trilogy on 18 November 2025.
Other media
Merchandise based on A Better Tomorrow has been released over the years. In 2016, toy manufacturer Enterbay issued a 1:6 scale action figure of Mark Lee. The figure came with multiple accessories, such as a pair of pistols, cigarettes, and bundles of money. Beginning in 2018, an officially-licensed comic book adaptation by Wong Shui-pan () was released over the span of three issues.
In September 2019, it was announced that musical director would be adapting the film and its sequel into a South Korean stage musical. With music composed by Lee Seong-jun (), the musical would use A Better Tomorrow as the basis for its first act, with its second act utilising scenes from A Better Tomorrow II and multiple flashback sequences to tell Kit's perspective. Featuring an ensemble cast of actors