‘A Better Tomorrow’

This energetic 1986 Hong Kong production is vintage John Woo, in which the celebrated writer-director has struck a perfect balance between emotion and highly styled violence. Its story involves two brothers--one a gangster (Ti Lung, left), the other a cop (“Farewell, My Concubine’s” Leslie Cheung, right). The central figure, however, is the older’s brother’s former partner in crime (the charismatic Chow Yun-Fat), now destitute and crippled. “A Better Tomorrow” proceeds imaginatively with a hard-driving relentlessness, with one tense incident after another.(Showtime late Thursday at midnight).