A Pulp Pledge in Smoke and Neon

Read Time:6 Minute, 53 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Flaming Brothers [Limited Edition] (Gong woo lung foo dau)
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Genre: Action, Crime, Drama
Year Released: 1987, Eureka Entertainment Blu-ray 2025
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director(s): Joe Cheung
Writer(s): Wong Kar-wai, Jeffrey Lau
Cast: Chow Yun-fat, Alan Tang, Patricia Ha, Patrick Tse, Norman Tsui, Eddy Ko, Philip Chan, Emily Chu
Where to Watch: available September 16, 2025, pre-order your copy here: www.eurekavideo.co.uk, www.mvdshop.com, or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: The promise here is simple and potent: two delinquents grow into power together and pay for it together. FLAMING BROTHERS doesn’t chase reinvention so much as it hunts for sincerity inside a well-worn outline—loyalty vs. ambition, brotherhood vs. survival. What makes it click, even when it stumbles, is the alchemy between a star in full bloom and a script that’s quietly sketching the bones of themes its writer would later obsess over.

Chow Yun-fat supplies the film’s pulse. His presence turns familiar scenes—the club opening, the back-room deals, the late-night reconciliations—into little demonstrations of charm weaponized. He doesn’t need speeches to sell devotion; a glance, a smile, and the way he re-holsters emotion between gunfights are enough. Opposite him, Alan Tang carries the stoic counterweight: a swaggering big brother whose control is always one humiliation away from collapse. Together, they chart a relationship that functions like an oath, and the film does its best work in the moments where that oath is tested: private arguments in public places, tough talk spoken like apologies, and a growing awareness that “forever” in their line of work usually means “until tonight.”

The script’s fingerprints are unmistakable. Wong Kar-wai’s earliest film writing often explores the tension between the lives people claim to lead and the lives they actually live. You can feel those seeds here—the ache of missed timing, the tug-of-war between hope and obligation, the knowledge that love inside a violent economy can’t stay clean. The romance subplot isn’t just filler; it’s the wedge that exposes what brotherhood costs. When one of them reaches for an ordinary life, the movie finds an extra gear of melancholy as the other figures out what “ordinary” would even look like without his shadow.

Joe Cheung’s direction chooses momentum over perfection. The staging is straightforward, the cutting brisk. He resists making every beat operatic, which both helps and hurts. On the upside, it prevents the story from collapsing into self-parody; the gunfights feel like eruptions rather than music videos. On the downside, that restraint sometimes blunts the crescendos—set pieces arrive without quite enough escalation, and a few character turns play as abrupt rather than inevitable. When the movie finally lets itself go big—a late standoff that has no interest in survivors—it finds the tragic clarity it’s been circling.

As a genre entry, this sits a half-step below the standard set by the most mythic titles of the era. The opposition reads broad by design, the heavies’ menace telegraphed by posture more than plotting. Yet even here the film offers texture: petty humiliations that spark gangland earthquakes, business rules that pass for ethics, and a series of retaliations that feel depressingly procedural. The world isn’t just dangerous; it’s bureaucratic about violence. That mundanity makes the loyalty theme sting more, because each sacrifice is processed like an invoice rather than a revelation.

Performance-wise, this is a study in contrasts. Chow’s humanity—jokes deflecting dread, steadiness masking longing—keeps inviting you to believe there’s an exit ramp. Tang’s rigidity says there isn’t. Patricia Ha gets more to play than the genre often allows; her scenes with Chow carry a tenderness that makes the film’s cruelty land harder. Patrick Tse’s villainy is unapologetic, which helps establish stakes quickly even if it leans into caricature. The ensemble around them—lieutenants, singers, opportunists—fills out a city that runs on favors and keeps score in blood.

The script threads in small comic and romantic detours that keep the tone from calcifying, but the direction treats those detours as foreshadowing rather than relief. Every happy scene is a future crime scene in disguise; every promise is an IOU with a deadline. If you’re measuring by catharsis, the finale delivers in grim terms. If you’re measuring by growth, the characters don’t transcend their world so much as they finally understand what they’ve always belonged to.

The new Blu-ray presentation matters for a film like this. The cleaner image does more than sharpen neon and cigarette haze; it clarifies the staging, making the bigger shootouts crisper and the club interiors feel less muddy. Newly translated subtitles correct the occasional flattening of idioms into clichés, lending the dialogue a sharper edge. The commentary track is a welcome addition: it frames the film within the heroic-bloodshed boom while pointing out where Cheung and his writers are carving their own niche—less balletic, more fatalistic. The director's interview underscores this intention: not to outdo the operatic highs of its peers, but to write a clear line from brotherhood to doom and let the audience walk it.

The movie earns its place as a time capsule of pre-handover Hong Kong and late-80s criminal mythmaking: clubs as kingdoms, ports as pressure valves, love as something you promise your way into and shoot your way out of. Most importantly, it gives Chow Yun-fat a canvas big enough for his full range—playful, romantic, fatalistic—and pairs him with Alan Tang in a dynamic that’s at once affectionate and combustible. By the time the last cartridges are spent, the outcome feels less like a twist than an audit: every choice paid in full.

As a physical-media package, this release is easy to recommend to genre fans: the restoration, the limited-edition packaging, and the contextual extras will please collectors, and the new subtitles make a real difference. As a film, it’s a meaningful, flawed entry—the kind of crime melodrama whose emotional residue outlasts its rough edges. The bullets provide the punctuation, but the sentence was always written in brotherhood.

Bonus Materials:
Limited to 2,000 copies
Limited edition O-card slipcase featuring new artwork by Time Tomorrow
Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring new writing on Flaming Brothers by Hong Kong cinema expert Camille Zaurin
Flaming Brothers presented in 1080p HD from a new 2K restoration
Original Cantonese audio
Optional English dubbed audio
Optional English subtitles, newly translated for this release
New audio commentary by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
Archival interview with director Joe Cheung
Original theatrical trailer
* All extras subject to change

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[photo courtesy of EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT, MVD ENTERTAINMENT]

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