The box-office sensation that established director John Woo as the king of 1980s Hong Kong action cinema and set the standard for the heroic bloodshed genre, this electrifying gangster saga combines the director’s intricate bullet play with operatic emotion as it tracks the explosive relationship between two brothers, one a criminal trying to reform (Ti Lung), the other a cop (Leslie Cheung) who blames his brother for their father’s death. In the first of his celebrated collaborations with Woo, Chow Yun-fat radiates his matchless cool as a hit man who lives by his own code.

A reforming ex-gangster tries to reconcile with his estranged policeman brother, but the ties to his former gang are difficult to break.

Reviews
 "By now, “John Woo” has become as much an adjective as a proper noun, an immediate signifier of a certain approach to action defined by elaborate, balletic movement and heavy use of slow motion. Woo planted the seeds of that style in A Better Tomorrow." – Slant

"The film that turned Hong Kong cinema away from nunchucks and onto guns and cool trench coats." – Empire