General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

A Moment of Romance III (天若有情III烽火佳人)

A Moment of Romance III (天若有情III烽火佳人) is a 1996 Hong Kong romantic war drama directed and produced by Johnnie To, starring Andy Lau as a Chinese air force pilot and Jacklyn Wu (吳倩蓮) as the village woman who rescues him, set during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1938.¹^•² It is the third film to carry the A Moment of Romance title, but it shares only its two lead actors with the earlier entries.³

Key fact	Detail
Release	Hong Kong, March 28, 1996; 95 minutes; drama, history, romance¹^•²
Director and producer	Johnnie To Kei-Fung (杜琪峰), his last film before founding the Milkyway Image studio⁴^•³
Lead roles	Andy Lau as pilot Lau Tin-Wai (劉天偉); Jacklyn Wu as the village girl Ting Siu-Wo (小禾); Alex Fong Chung-Sun as The Captain⁵
Setting	1938 China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, around the Nationalist government's presence in Wuhan²^•⁶
Key crew	Writers Sandy Shaw Lai-King and Yau Nai-Hoi; cinematographer Poon Hang-Sang; editor Wong Wing-Ming; composers Raymond Wong Ying-Wah and William Hu⁵
Hong Kong rating	Category IIA, mild language and violence⁷

Spoilers

Story

The film is set in 1938, when China was at war with Japan and the Nationalist government had its base at Wuhan. Lau Tin-Wai (Andy Lau) is the second son of a powerful Wuhan military and political family who joined the air force partly to prepare a future political career. On a routine mission he runs into Japanese fighters, is badly wounded, and makes an emergency landing in a small mountain village, where the village girl Siu-Wo (小禾, Jacklyn Wu) saves him.⁶^•⁸

Obstacles and separation. While she nurses him back to health the two fall in love, but the villagers oppose the match because Siu-Wo was promised from childhood to the village chief's son.⁶^•⁴ Tin-Wai decides to take her with him when he leaves, but she misses the plane; on the return flight his aircraft is shot down by Japanese planes, and his comrades blame him even as his family stages a grand welcome that only embarrasses him.⁶

The mission and ending. As the Nationalist government prepares to move to Chongqing, the air force is assigned a near-suicidal mission to bomb a Japanese base in order to cover the larger retreat. Tin-Wai volunteers against his family's wishes, and the squadron commander (Alex Fong), first opposed, is won over by his determination. Siu-Wo travels to Wuhan and finds him, promising to wait. During the raid she and Tin-Wai's mother wait at the base and receive only news that he has been killed; Siu-Wo keeps clearing the runway against all objections, and the film ends with Tin-Wai flying back to the base against expectation.⁶ A Chinese reference summary states instead that he died on the bombing mission,⁹, so summaries of the ending differ between sources.

Place in the series

The 1990 film A Moment of Romance (天若有情), directed by Benny Chan and produced by Johnnie To, starred Lau and Wu as Wah Dee and Jojo in a modern triad romance and became one of the best-known Hong Kong films of the decade.¹⁰ The third installment keeps the two stars but discards the earlier plot entirely: as the critic Sean Gilman writes, in Hong Kong "spiritual sequels can be numbered as actual sequels, they need not be in any other way related," and Lau and Wu are the only connection between the films.³ MUBI's synopsis likewise describes the film as reuniting the pair while throwing out the modern-day Romeo and Juliet plot in favor of a wartime romance set against the Chinese retreat from the invading Japanese.¹¹

To's transition. The film was Johnnie To's final picture before he launched the Milkyway Image studio, the company behind the crime films for which he is best known.³ One reviewer described it as a minor hit whose profits helped finance To's subsequent work.⁷

Style and production

The cinematographer was Poon Hang-sang, whose credits include Centre Stage, Peking Opera Blues, and The Heroic Trio.³ Gilman describes the film's visual approach as a Spielberg-like period aesthetic: low shots of the horizon, farmers and soldiers backlit against rising and setting suns, and dark interiors slashed by overexposed light through open windows, with the best passages nearly dialogue-free and carried by images and Raymond Wong's score.³ The film was shot largely on mainland locations; the IMDb crew list includes a Changchun unit with its own assistant directors, production managers, and makeup artist.⁵

The Taiwan poster preserved in Taiwan's National Culture and Memory database identifies the production companies as Win's Entertainment (永盛娛樂製作有限公司) with photography by Golden Harvest-affiliated 金麟娛樂有限公司, directed by To and starring Lau and Wu.¹²

Reception

Reviews were divided along predictable lines. LoveHKFilm's reviewer called it "well-executed, watchable sap," crediting the production values and Wu's performance while finding the setup hackneyed and the montages overbearing.⁴ The hkfilm.net review gave it 3 out of 10, faulting the slow pace, Lau's stony performance, and what it saw as formulaic romance filmmaking, while acknowledging it was a minor hit.⁷ Gilman praised the imagery and Wu's performance, judged Lau uncomfortable in the role, and argued the film ultimately feels too safe for a To romance, since despite doomed pilots and impossible missions it never conveys a real possibility of tragedy.³ A YesAsia customer review praised the cinematography, editing, and Wu's performance but objected to what it called greeting-card sentimentality in the storytelling.¹³

Home video

The film has been released on Hong Kong DVD by Mei Ah Entertainment in anamorphic widescreen with Cantonese and Mandarin tracks, Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 audio, and removable English and Chinese subtitles; a remastered DTS DVD and VCD versions have also been sold.⁴^•¹³ An early Mega Star disc carries trailers and stars' files as extras.⁷ The picture format is 2.39:1.²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026