The Brothers (1979 film)
| The Brothers | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Hua Shan |
| Written by |
|
| Story by | |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Shaw Brothers Studio |
Release date | 1979 |
| Country | Hong Kong |
| Languages |
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| Box office | HK$556,266[1] |
The Brothers (
Plot
Hong Kong Cinemagic provides the following plot summary.[2]
Liu Yung, one of Bruce Lee's favorite co-stars, is the brother whose destiny is to become a top mobster. Danny Lee (future co-star of John Woo's The Killer) is the brother fated to become a cop. More than five years before John Woo was to play out the same conflict in his international film festival favorite A Better Tomorrow, the Shawscope screen was filled with similarly powerful blood, sweat, and tears.
Cast
The following are the film's main cast members.[6]
- Tony Liu (Lau Wing) as Zhang Zhigang
- Danny Lee Sau-Yinas Inspector Zhang Zhiqiang
- Chow Lai-Kuen as Yanfen
- Ku Feng as Boss Qian Laosan
- Nam Hung as Mother Zhang
- Chiang Tao as Zhou Hei / Blackie
- Ricky Wong Chung-Tsu as Young Zhigang
- Harada Riki as Father Zhang
- Chan Shen as Boss Huang Shou Ren
- Alan Chan Kwok-Kuen as Huang's assistant
- Wang Han-Chen as Dock worker
- Yang Chi-Ching as Police chief
- Wong Ching-Ho as Mr. Wang
- Hung Ling-Ling as Mrs. Wang
Production
The Brothers is a remake of
There are some notable differences. It has a shorter 90-minute length, compared to the original's 176 minutes. Other changes reflect the shift from
Legacy
The Brothers played a key role in the creation of the heroic bloodshed crime genre of 1980s Hong Kong action cinema.[5] Plot elements of The Brothers was reimagined for John Woo's internationally acclaimed breakthrough A Better Tomorrow (1986),[5] which involved a similar conflict between two brothers on opposing sides of the law.[2] In particular, Ti Lung's character in A Better Tomorrow is similar to Tony Liu's character in The Brothers (in turn based on Amitabh Bachchan's character in Deewaar).[4] In turn, A Better Tomorrow was a landmark film, credited with creating the heroic bloodshed genre,[7] which was influential in Hong Kong action cinema, and later Hollywood.[8] The Brothers also established Danny Lee (playing Sashi Kapoor's character from Deewaar) with a police officer persona later seen in Hong Kong crime films such as Woo's The Killer (1989).[4][2]
References
- ^ "差人大佬搏命仔（1979）". KungFu Tube (in Japanese). 16 June 2012. Retrieved 30 November 2018.
- ^ a b c d "The Brothers". Hong Kong Cinemagic. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
- ^ Shaw Brothers Films
- ^ a b c d e Mondal, Sayantan. "Amitabh Bachchan starrer 'Deewar' was remade in Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam – and Cantonese". Scroll.in. Retrieved 30 January 2017.
- ^ a b c "Heroic Bloodshed: How Hong Kong's style was swiped by Hollywood". British Film Institute. 11 July 2019. Retrieved 9 September 2019.
- Hong Kong Movie DataBase. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
- ISBN 0-7864-0990-8.
- ^ Volodzko, David (13 June 2015). "30 Years Later, This Chinese Film Still Echoes in Hollywood". The Diplomat.
External links
- The Brothers at IMDb
