Silent Night (2023) - Movie Review

John Woo, the action filmmaker that just about every other action film or even parodies of every other action film over the past forty years owes some artistic debt to, has returned to Hollywood. While his work State-side never really managed to reach the artistic heights of his heyday, as memetic as films like Face/Off and even Mission: Impossible 2 have become, I’m still calling this a moment of potential celebration because… well, it makes the most sense why 2023 would be the year that he would come back. In the same time frame that John Wick, a franchise that simply wouldn’t exist without John Woo’s iconic approach to action thrills, reached its creative apex with Chapter 4, getting more of that grandeur direct from the source is quite the offer.

A Better Tomorrow (2018) - Movie Review

 

The plot: Brothers Kai (Kai Wang) and Chao (Tianyu Ma) are on opposite sides of the law: Kai is a smuggler working for crime lord Ha Ge (Suet Lam) alongside his partner Mark (Darren Wang), while Chao is an up-and-coming officer in the Hong Kong narcotics division. However, as they discover how distant they have become from each other, Kai decides to reform his criminal ways and maybe regain the trust of his brother. In order to do the right thing by his family, he may have to cut ties with his former employers… permanently.