City Wolf II - billing in installments

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Movie
German title City Wolf II - billing in installments
Original title 英雄 本色 II, Ying hong boon sik II
Country of production HK
original language Cantonese
Publishing year 1987
length about 100 minutes
Age rating FSK 18 (cut version) Unchecked (uncut version)
Rod
Director John Woo
script Tsui Hark
John Woo
production Tsui Hark
music Joseph Koo
Lowell Lo
camera Wing-Hung Wong
cut David Wu
occupation
chronology

←  Predecessor
City Wolf

Successor  →
Witches Cauldron Saigon

Better Tomorrow II - settlement in installments ( Chinese  英雄本色II ) is the second part of the film - trilogy A Better Tomorrow the action film - director John Woo from Hong Kong .

action

Sung Tse Ho, a former criminal, and his brother Sung Tse Kit, a police officer, work as police agents for a shipyard. Evidence of illegal actions by the managing director Lung is said to be found there. But Lung's assistant Ko Ying Pui is in charge of the illegal business and plans to kill Lung to take over the company. Sung Tse Ho and Sung Tse Kit help Lung and take him to New York . Lung has a nervous breakdown there when he learns that his daughter has been killed and other people around him are dying in attacks. In this state, the ex-criminal and restaurant owner Ken (twin brother of Mark from the first part), who emigrated as a teenager, takes him under his wing. After being tracked down in the US, hired American gangsters carry out several attacks on the two, with many dead. With the help and care of Ken it is possible that Lung recovers to some extent psychologically. Meanwhile, as an undercover agent, Kit is being shot under duress by his own brother Ho, who has meanwhile sneaked into the organization, and can barely survive a quick operation. In order to avoid further attacks and to take revenge, Ken and Lung travel back to Hong Kong and decide together with Kit and Ho, Ko to finally put an end to the trade and to smash his organization. During an observation of Kos mansion, Kit is discovered and shot again. Although he is rescued by Ken, he dies too seriously injured on the way to the hospital the moment he hears on a telephone from his wife Jackie that his daughter has been born. After Kit's funeral, Ho, Ken and Lung, assisted by Ho's former employer at a taxi company that employs former criminals, storm the mansion, which is home to nearly 100 bodyguards and gangsters, heavily armed and kill all criminals in a violent shootout, including those primarily responsible. At the end, after the work is done, all three of them sit in the devastated house in armchairs and wait, seriously injured, for the arriving police.

Reviews

“Middle part of a three-part cycle that lasted 160 minutes in the original version and can only be viewed as a completely incomprehensible torso in the German version. A series of ludicrous shooting orgies, located between the existentialism of Sam Peckinpah and the surrealism influenced by the Peking Opera, the logic of which can no longer be seen through. "

- Lexicon of international film

background

The film is an important and style-defining title in the Heroic Bloodshed genre . The showdown, in which the three heroes of the film single-handedly hunt down about 100 criminals in a villa with excessive bloodshed, became legendary among genre fans and long held the title of the highest body count per minute. There is no cut version on the index. The uncut version has not been checked.

Originally, John Woo's film was not conceived as a sequel to his box office hit A Better Tomorrow (appeared in Germany under the name A Better Tomorrow or as an abbreviated first release called City Wolf ), but as a prequel : Woo wanted his Vietnam War- based prehistory to that of Ti Lung and Chow Yun-Fat portray characters from Part 1, but producer Tsui Hark more or less talked him out of this. Later it finally came to a break when Tsui Hark staged A Better Tomorrow 3 - Love And Death In Saigon (HK 1989, English title: Hexenkessel Saigon ) himself without Woo - as a prequel in Vietnam. John Woo then shot his own (unofficial and also heavily modified) version of his history as Bullet in the Head .

Awards

Siu-Tung Ching, the film's action choreographer, and Leslie Cheung were each nominated for a prize at the 1988 Hong Kong Film Awards .

Web links

References and literature

  1. ↑ City Wolf II - billing in installments. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ See: Thomas Gaschler, Ralph Umard: Woo. Verlag Belleville, Munich 2005, ISBN 3933510481 , and
    Thomas Gaschler, Vollmar Eckhard: Dark Stars. Belleville, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-923646-50-X .