An Entertaining Bulletfest
Summary
A precursor to some of the bigger and better known Hong Kong gun and bullet-fests that came just a few years later (think Hard Boiled and The Killer), but smack in the center of Chow Yun-fat’s rise to stardom after his film A Better Tomorrow (which was the year before this), Flaming Brothers has all the bloodshed, shootouts galore, and melodrama of a standard Hong Kong action film of that era, making it a solid enough entry in the genre.
Plot: Brothers bound by mutual experience and hardship but not blood grow up on the streets and become triad enforcers.
Review: Street urchins with a bond that can never be broken, Cheung Ho-tin and Chan Wai-lun are orphans, but because they’re together, they will never truly be alone. When they grow up, they become pretty powerful Triad enforcers with money, sex appeal, power, and respect, but they have enemies. Cheung (Chow Yun-Fat) reconnects with a woman he knew when they were children, and this causes him to want to leave his well-established life of crime behind, while Chan begins romancing a singer who has all kinds of attention from gangsters and lowlifes who desire her beauty, but not her heart. When Cheung does his best to walk away from the Triad, he’s called back in when the young son of one of their friends is heartlessly murdered (this film’s most wince-inducing scene), and both Cheun and Chan have to man up and go to war for honor and revenge, but by then they’re totally outnumbered and cornered by a police force that has just been looking for an excuse to shut them down … permanently.
A precursor to some of the bigger and better known Hong Kong gun and bullet-fests that came just a few years later (think Hard Boiled and The Killer), but smack in the center of Chow Yun-Fat’s rise to stardom after his film A Better Tomorrow (which was the year before this), Flaming Brothers has all the bloodshed, shootouts galore, and melodrama of a standard Hong Kong action film of that era, making it a solid enough entry in the genre. What kills its rewatchability is a definitive bummer of an ending, which might dampen your enjoyment of what came before. The movie has a downbeat vibe with the on-screen (simulated) killing of a little boy that sets the climax in motion, so fair warning. It’s easy to see why Yun-Fat became a big star around this time, and this film is one of the reasons why. Remember: He made 22 movies between 1986-1987 (11 each year)! From director Tung Cho Cheung.
Eureka! has just released a Blu-ray edition of Flaming Brothers, and the new 2K restoration looks great, with optional English language or Cantonese audio, a new audio commentary by Mike Leeder, a video locations piece, an archival interview, and more.