Badmovies.org Forum

Flaming Brothers (1987) is a "heroic bloodshed" Hong Kong film starring Chow Yun Fat. One thing I didn't notice until the film started is that it was written by nobody else than renowned HK director Wong Kar Wai. Talk about weird.

I've done some digging about the matter. Looks like at that time Wong Kar Wai was trying to obtain industry credit in order to start his career as a director, and he obtained writing several HK films, this one being one of them. Interesting. Shrtly after the success of this film he would direct his first movie, As Tears Go By.

The film is pretty good. Don't expect Kar Wai's personality to make a stelar appearence. The only Kar Warish thing about it is that there's a love story, and contrary to most HK action films, here it is fleshed out with great care. As for the rest, Heroic Bloodshed fans will have a field day. There's the troubled brothers (check), who make their ascent in the HK underworld (check), a villain in the shape of a rival druglord, a policeman who treats them like a father figure although he wants to jail them, a grand finale which probably used all the squibs available in HK at the time, a number of ballet-like, extremely bloody action scenes, and several Chinese-style  comic interludes.

All these things have been done to death with time, but it did surprise me that only a year after John Woo's seminal A better tomorrow they had learned the formula so well. There might be better Heroic Bloodshed films out there, but this one is among the finest I've ever seen.