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| Better
Luck Tomorrow 2002
Directed
by: Justin Lin
Written by: Ernesto Foronda, Justin Lin, Fabian Marquez
Starring: Parry Shen, Jason J. Tobin, Sung Kan, Roger Fan, Karin
Anna Cheung, John Cho
Language: English
Look for it at the video store under: drama, crime
Watch it when you’re in the mood
for
something: darkly
comic,
disturbing,
hip
The critic says:
½/
5 the rating system
explained
Fun factor: /5 |
Plot synopsis
When we first meet him, sweet little Ben Manibag seems like another
stereotypical, over-achieving Asian-American geek, doggedly memorizing
multisyllabic words each night to ensure that he can up his SAT's sixty
points to score that perfect 1600. He and his friend Virgil are the
resident smart kids -- school comes easily to them, their CV's are
replete with extracurriculars, and they're looking forward to getting
out of their boring, upper-middle-class, suburban California existences,
and on to college. Ben studies hard, works hard, participates in every
club in existence, and even finds time to play basketball and get
friendly with a cute cheerleader named Stephanie. What no one knows is
that beneath the dutiful good student exteriors, Ben and Virgil have
been dipping into a little illegal activity here and there. It all
starts off relatively innocent, as Ben, Virgil and Virgil's cousin Han
run a credit card scam on the local electronics superstore. But when the
three friends get involved with Daric, their adventures descend into the
deeply criminal. A lucrative business selling cheat sheets brings in
money and power -- along with the ever-elusive cool -- and soon, the
four friends are roaming town like a gang, selling drugs, running cons,
getting into fights … and loving their new, bad-ass reputations.
Review
Watching Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow, I had the same
thought I did when I watched Larry Clark's Kids: this sure
doesn't look like high school like I remember it. Nor does it look like
high school like it's usually portrayed in teen movies -- despite the
fact that at the beginning, Lin plays on our expectations of the usual
teen stereotypes of smart kids versus cool kids, geeks versus jocks.
Instead, Lin's movie is a fresh, entertaining and rather unsettling take
on American teen life -- with a little nod to Hong Kong crime flicks and
Tarantino-hip, comedic-violent style. Is Better Luck Tomorrow a
"good" depiction of what it means to be an Asian-American
adolescent? Not as this Asian-American remembers those years -- but
this, to me, is one of the most interesting things about watching Ben,
Virgil, Daric and Han. These characters don't fit neatly into a type --
unlike just about every other Asian-American character I've seen in
movies or read about in books thus far. They're defined not by their
ethnicity, but by their actions: not by who they are, but the things
they do. In the end, it doesn't matter if as an Asian-American -- heck,
any American -- you can identify with any of Lin's morally-devoid
protagonists (honestly, for the sake of the future of the world, let's
hope you can't). The fact that they're allowed to be as flawed,
conflicted and complex as any of the most memorable Caucasian characters
in the history of film makes Better Luck Tomorrow well worth a
look. —reviewed
by Yee-Fan Sun
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