Flaming Brothers

While most of the gun-slinging ’80s action heroes were one-note performers, Chow Yun-Fat was the exception to the rule. Handsome, charming, and emotionally accessible, the Hong Kong actor could play a romantic lead and a trigger-happy badass at the same time. 1987’s Flaming Brothers takes advantage of both sides of his enduring appeal. Bookended by John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow and its sequel, director Tung Cho Cheung’s film see-saws between melodrama and heroic bloodshed, mercilessly squeezing blood, sweat, and tears out of its charismatic lead.

Yun-Fat and Alan Tang play childhood friends who claw their way up from Macau street hustlers to gangsters on the rise. But their success draws the wrath of Fourth Brother Kao, who sets out to curb their ambitions by any means necessary. To make matters worse, true love complicates everything, as each man falls for a woman who makes him second-guess not just their criminal career, but their friendship.

It’s no accident that the romantic despair hits as hard as the gunfire—Wong Kar Wai co-wrote the script, years before Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love made him an international darling. You can already feel his fingerprints in the doomed romances, in characters forever reaching for a happiness they’ll never quite grasp, and in the melancholy that lingers even after the gun smoke clears. Director Tung Cho Cheung may push harder on the genre mechanics, but Wong’s sensibility ensures the melodrama carries real sting.

If the film falters, it’s in pacing and tone. The push-and-pull between doomed romance and explosive violence can feel lopsided, with the crime saga occasionally grinding to a halt so the melodrama can take center stage. Still, that unevenness is part of its charm, and the bullet-riddled finale in a cramped horse stable is everything you could ask for in an HK action film. Flaming Brothers may not be the sleek, genre-defining classic of its peers, but as a snapshot of Chow Yun-Fat at the height of his powers—effortlessly bridging the worlds of tough-guy bravado and romantic vulnerability—it’s a worthy relic of Hong Kong cinema’s golden age.

Eureka’s 2,000-copy limited edition Blu-ray features a new 2K restoration, Cantonese or English audio options, fresh audio commentary from action-cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema, a well-produced location tour, and a lengthy archival interview with director “Joe” Cheung.