Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian / A Brighter Summer Day (1991) 3 x DVD9 and 2 x Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

After the Communist victory in the civil war of 1949, some 1.3 million refugees from Mainland China came to Taiwan. It was a time when the island was governed by a dictatorship in which all political parties other than the Kuomintang were outlawed, and political opponents were persecuted, jailed, and executed, a continuation of the White Terror campaign launched after the 2/28 incident. Uncertain about their future and shaken by the weakening of family traditions, immigrant teenagers joined street gangs like the Little Park Gang and fought against indigenous island groups such as the 217 to strengthen their sense of security.

Like a lot of kids his age, Si'r (Chang Chen, a future Asian movie star) is self-conscious and often withdrawn. The youngest son of his family, which fled from the mainland to Taipei after the Communist victory in 1949, Si'r struggles academically — he's been demoted to the less-prestigious night school — and is caught between two warring street gangs, one made up of fellow mainland transplants and the other populated with sons of the locals. Though occasionally bullied by members of each side, Si'r pledges allegiance to neither, staying out of the conflict that consumes his classmates. That is, until he falls, almost accidentally, into a kind of quasi-romance with Ming (Lisa Yang), who's dating Honey (Lin Hung-ming), absent leader of the Little Park Gang. Before long, this innocent courtship has led him down a path away from his studies and into violence.
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