As Tears Go By (1988)

disgusting, overrated, pointless

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

When it comes to Gangster movies, only the romantic lens of Kar Wai Wong could result in a movie that features a couple captured in loving embrace on its DVD cover and a title befitting a melodramatic sob-fest as opposed to the blood-thirsty, violent display that it actually aspires to be. Awash with a heavy-handed eighties synth-rock soundtrack that does absolutely nothing for the film some twenty years onwards, As Tears Go By is the byproduct of a director being given the reigns for the very first time and quite naturally, not quite knowing how to implement the hundreds of ideas that he has brewing around in his brain. Indeed, while much of the script is very barebones material drawing heavily influences from Scorsese's Mean Streets amongst other higher-budget Hollywood features, it is Wong's frantic, almost schizophrenic pacing and storytelling that gives it a voice of its own. Sure, it's a voice that at this point in time is still very much in its infancy—awkward and stilted—yet you can nevertheless see where the director was going with this, his directorial debut.Telling the story of two Triad "brothers" as they battle the passions of themselves and those around them, As Tears Go By is an interesting take on the already well-established gangster movie format. Inherent here are the typical staples; the partners at odds with each other, one a young hot-headed blood-thirsty shark looking to go places and his Big Brother, a cool, laid-back veteran with little to no ambition. Brought together, the two end up at odds with other gangsters and loan sharks who consistently threaten death upon both of them should they fail to make ends meet. This tangent which naturally plays out as nine tenths of Wong's story here, bounces back and forth between genuinely compelling action and frustratingly caricaturist drama that seems to repeat itself every twenty minutes. Indeed, if there is any fault to As Tears Go By at all, it exists in Wong's insistence in elaborate, almost inconsequential set-pieces that are fun to watch the first or second time, but wear thin after you realize not much else is happening.On the other side of the pond however lies a romantic subplot that has given As Tears Go By and indeed Wong himself their names in the cinematic landscape. Centering around the older brother and his passionate affair with his distant cousin who comes to stay for a while, the love story here as it is displayed, is fine and one can understand how audiences may have been moved by its appearance here within an otherwise stoic and bloody display of testosterone, yet suffocated by so much of said action, nothing much is achieved from this deviation. The result is something more akin to a distraction than a truly compelling romance; indeed, while many claim the scene which adorns the DVD cover (which depicts the two in a passionate kiss inside a phone booth) to be representative of Wong's romanticist indulgences that would permeate much of his later career as a film-maker, its initial appearance here is tepid at best. Instead I point to the movie's closing sequence as its most affirming and memorable; it's not exactly a typical Wong depiction, yet it's startling, moving and even just a little bit romantic at the same time too.In the end, while As Tears Go By stands as a significant and interesting insight into a director's early footsteps in directorial shoes, much of the feature stands as too half-baked in areas that matter most and overly heavy-handed in areas which only lead to grating and often confusing indulgences. Sure enough, the performances are fine and the movie itself exists as a fair enough take on an already done-to-death genre, yet burdened with a fairly straight-forward script that caters very little to Wong's subtler strengths as a director (which he would find a decade on), much of this debut is rendered a mere artifact of curiosity for those interested; those looking for a genuinely thrilling, or enjoyable movie however should stay clear—As Tears Go By certainly has its moments, but lacks the connective tissue to bind it all together.

I saw this movie yesterday, and let me tell you my friends it didn't disappoint me. But don't get me wrong, it's not that this movie is fabulous (God forbid), is that I hadn't any expectations before seeing it.The film starts good. We have our main character, a lonely and tough guy who receives a phone call from a relative (aunt?), telling him that he has to give shelter to an unknown cousin of him for a few days. This cousin is a young woman who wears a chinstrap due to some illness. They hit it off quickly and she is introduced to his cousin world: an underground world full of crime. Here, in this world, we are introduced to the character's brothers: Fly (a gangster wannabe) and Site (Fly's sidekick). After some scenes of violence involving the three brothers, we learn that Ngo (the girl), had to go back to her home. Hau Tau (the main character), not waiting to loose Ngo's love, decided to track her back. After this, I fall asleepAgain, don't get me wrong people. The movie is not that hideous, I was very tired after a grueling day of work. However, between the part we learn about Ngo's departure and Hau tau's travel to Ngo's place, the movie somehow slows down a bit in a very noticeable way.To sum up, this movie it's not so bad, but it's not s good either. After all, it is just another movie

One of my favorite film viewing pastimes is going back to the early films of some of my favorite directors and getting a feel for where they've come from to get to where they are. In the last year or so, Wong Kar-Wai has firmly ensconced himself as my favorite contemporary filmmaker, and tonight, I treated myself to his 1988 debut feature As Tears Go By.What makes this film fascinating is the startling degree to which Wong's instinct for visual poetry and his ability to translate the almost physical pain of longing onto the screen are both already finely honed, though the languid pacing and narrative inventiveness of his later works (like undisputed masterpiece In the Mood for Love) are notably absent.As Tears Go By wears the clothing of a straightforward Hong Kong street opera of the type made famous during the 1980s by John Woo, though Wong also tips the cap to Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets. It features swaggering bravado and staccato violence one expects of such fare, and is both Wong's most accessible film and his only commercial success to date.As Tears Go By centers on Wah (Andy Lau), an up-and-coming Triad gangster trying to balance his own ambitions against his loyalty to his feckless "little brother" Fly (Jacky Cheung), whose impulsivity represents a constant danger, not only to himself, but to Wah as well (though he also provides an otherwise tense film with much needed humor). Wah's life is further complicated by a growing love for his cousin Ngor (frequent Wong collaborator Maggie Cheung in her first major dramatic role), a beautiful girl whose existence he was totally unaware of before she came to stay with him while seeking medical treatment in Hong Kong.Beneath the familiar aspects of genre film, however, lurk the seeds of Wong Kar-Wai's later mastery. As Tears Go By could have been just another bullet ballet, but it is instead a searing, romantic work of art, despite occasional clichés. Always something of an actor's director (and famous for leaning heavily on the improvisational talents of his stars, despite his own background as a screenwriter), he coaxes from his cast performances that are uniformly excellent. Jacky Cheung, in particular, stands out, and he imbues Fly with a reckless machismo that only serves to highlight the self-doubt that gnaws at his soul. The Hong Kong Film Awards Best Actor trophy which Cheung won for this role was well-deserved.But it is Wong Kar-Wai who really dominates As Tears Go By, as the visual and emotional style that characterized his later works is already in evidence. His signature thematic concerns of longing and memory, and the master iconography he associates with these concepts (slow burning cigarettes and torrential downpours, respectively) figure prominently in As Tears Go By, and while his mastery of the basic visual style he introduces in this film would increase with later films, he was already a powerful cinematic poet.The only elements of his mature style that are missing are the characteristically recursive and self-referential narrative structures of his later work and the constant weight of emotional isolation that so perfectly captures the disassociative rootlessness of modern existence (though the latter is not completely lacking, and is especially apparent in the opening scenes of the movie). This has the effect of slightly lessening the impact of some of the imagery, but it cannot keep As Tears Go By from being an immensely powerful debut film.8/10

What an utterly strange film this is. I cannot begin to describe how wonderful this movie made me feel. I can equate it, on a visceral level, with listening to Daft Punk's Discovery. You know, that moment in "Harder Better Faster Stronger" when you get to the real break down replete with amazing vocoderized chanting? I had this stupid grin on my face the first time I heard that and immediately stopped dancing at this club in Cork, Ireland. It was jaw dropping. So is As Tears Go By. It travels paths upon which many a film has journeyed (Mean Streets, most notably), but it contains such vibrancy and life that a rather bittersweet quasi-gangster movie is transformed into something more. It transcends the dour catholicism of Scorsese's breakthrough film and achieves a sense of joy and rapture that rivals some of the greatest, most buoyant films of all time (such as Wizard of Oz and Singin' in the Rain). The other reason to admire this film derives from its fight scenes. Compare the fisticuffs here to the work of more highly-regarded Asian action directors. Look at Crouching Tiger, Hero, or Hard Boiled and tell me that the fight scenes in those films are more brutal than the ones here. They're not. I will not go so far as to say that As Tears Go By contains better fight scenes, but I will say that I found that they hurt to watch; you could actually feel the blows. That's more than I can say for the fight scenes in those other films. The only thing that this film resembles, as far as eliciting a visceral reaction from a fight scene, is the fight in the trailer in Kill Bill 2 (or really the Uma/Vivica fight in Kill Bill 1). As Tears Goes By achieves a brutality that most directors try to avoid. And yes, that's admirable (insert rant about the desensitizing power of violence in media...).This is a great movie, but not quite as great as Happy Together or Chungking Express (it is an improvement upon In the Mood for Love). This was one of Wong Kar Wai's earliest feature films and there is an immaturity to the direction at times that almost always accompanies the work of a young director. Wong Kar Wai is one of the greatest living directors (as good a filmmaker as Herzog, Jarmusch, Spielberg, or Leigh) and should be more highly regarded. As Tears Go By is a great place to start, as it is a tad more accessible than some of his later work and offers viewers a nice portal into this filmmaker's world.