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BETTER
LUCK TOMORROW Rating:   (out of 5 stars)Director: Justin Lin Producers: Julie Asato, Ernesto M. Foronda, Justin Lin Writer: Ernesto M. Foronda, Justin Lin, Fabian Marquez Director of Photography: Patrice Lucien Cochet Cast: Parry Shen, Jason Tobin, Sung Kang, Roger Fan, John Cho, Karin Anna Cheung Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew |
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(Read the interview with Better Luck Tomorrow director Justin Lin)
Review by: Warren
Curry
4/6/03
A bona fide hit on the festival circuit since its premiere at Sundance 2002, Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow has been the topic of much conversation for two main reasons. First and foremost, the movie is one of the few to feature a predominantly Asian-American cast; secondly, one of the film's post-screening Q&A sessions at Sundance triggered a highly publicized angry reaction from Roger Ebert, when he lashed out at an audience member who offered that Lin had a responsibility to his community and failed to create a positive portrait of young Asian-Americans. With that in mind, several questions surround Better Luck Tomorrow -- does director Lin have any sort of responsibility to his "community"? Is the film really a negative depiction of Asian-American teens? Will this movie merely go down in the annals of film history as the "Asian-American novelty picture that got the world's most powerful film critic in a lather at the U.S.'s pre-eminent film festival"?
While Better Luck Tomorrow's main characters are Asian-Americans, the film is only tangentially about the Asian-American experience. Lin's focus is set squarely on the life of the contemporary suburban teenager, and the lives he chooses to explore in this film aren't necessarily pretty ones. Lin will never be confused with John Hughes, although the characters in Better Luck Tomorrow confront many of the same coming-of-age dilemmas that stared the angst-ridden high school students of The Breakfast Club in the face so many years ago. But Lin uses the "teen movie" genre as a launching pad and lands in a territory somewhere between early Scorsese and Larry Clark. These characters ostensibly never had any innocence to strip away.
Ben (Parry Shen) is a straight A, bound for an Ivy League school student, whose group of friends -- which includes livewire Virgil (Jason Tobin), ominously reserved Han (Sung Kang) and fellow upstanding citizen Daric (Roger Fan) -- balance lives of upper middle class accomplishment with a fascination for increasingly dangerous mischief. In a world where parents are literally nowhere to be found, the boys' wrongdoings go from the relatively banal to the criminal. Ben's quest to be the consummate overachiever doesn't wane at all, as his life becomes a nonstop job split between the diametrically opposed worlds of academia and recidivism. He even finds time to develop romantic feelings for classmate, Stephanie (Karin Anna Cheung), who is dating a mysterious boy from another local high school named Steve (American Pie's -- think MILF -- John Cho). But as Ben and crew seem to attain everything they want -- namely attention and respect -- their lives spin out of control and culminate with an act completely beyond the realm of anything they're equipped to handle.
Ground similar to Better Luck Tomorrow has been covered before, but not often in a way that treats the characters as respectfully as Lin treats his. Unlike another film about relatively privileged kids turning to the dark side, Larry Clark's Bully, there's no trace of character exploitation here. Ben and his friends are smart people, and know exactly what they're getting themselves into, yet they fall prey to the seductive powers of this new lifestyle. There's no explicit pandering to the "products of their environment" school of thought, but that begs a broader discussion of what sort of behavior the suburbs actually foster. Perhaps a gang mentality is something that's romanticized by naive suburban kids, and the difference between this safe form of pseudo-hooligan activity and the real deal is addressed in one telling yet fairly obvious scene.
For its first two-thirds, Better Luck Tomorrow is an often-great film -- paced perfectly and dismissing shortcuts (aside from Shen's voiceover narration, which could've been scrapped) to thoroughly build its characters. When Ben's actions cross the line of what one can reasonably deem as idle troublemaking, this major development is earned. But for all its attention to detail early, the film takes on an entirely different personality in the third act. Plot holes abound, and it really feels like Lin is straining to find a proper way to conclude. The film ends on an ambiguous note, but instead of being provocative the lack of resolution comes across like a cop out.
These regrettable flaws are not enough to completely detract from the many strengths of this film. It will be unfortunate if this movie is seen as just a novelty, because the truth is that it doesn't really matter that these characters are Asian-American. One can only hope that Better Luck Tomorrow will pioneer a trend where American movies made up of underrepresented cinematic minorities will no longer be seen as "novel." At this stage, Justin Lin can be defined as a "raw" talent, but as a filmmaker who fuses ideas with the ability to create engaging characters and flat-out entertain, his future is one to be watched closely.
(An MTV Films/Paramount Pictures release. Opens in limited release on April 11, 2003. Expands to more cities at later dates.)
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