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Sworn Brothers

1987

Director: David Lai

Stars: Andy Lau, Bill Tung, Eddy Ko Hung, Cheung Kwok-Keung, Siu Hung-Mui

After the runaway success of John Woo's A Better Tomorrow, there was a plethora of imitators who tried to capitalize on the movie's success. This film is pretty typical of that lot. There's really nothing original about it -- the film's plot is even much the same as ABT, with two brothers on opposite sides of the law (Lau and Cheung, with Andy being the bad guy this time out) drawn together by a dying father (Tung). Like in ABT, there's even a subplot about a innocent girlfriend (Siu) who wants a music career. This movie even rips off scenes from other movies as well; there's one sequence almost totally swiped from DePalma's Scarface.

If you're a big Andy Lau groupie, you may want to check this movie out, since he does seem to have a problem keeping his shirt on and supplies a syrupy ballad at the end of the film. Otherwise, there's quite a few other films in this genre that are much better than this one.

RATING: 5

A review of the VCD for this movie can be found here

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