Better Luck Tomorrow (April 17/03)

Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow clearly marks the arrival of an exciting new talent. But, as tends to be the case with emerging filmmakers, Lin tries to accomplish too much and packs his story with far more elements than were necessary - which ultimately turns Better Luck Tomorrow into a film that's visually interesting but flawed.

The movie stars Parry Shen as Ben Manibag, an academically ambitious high school student who dabbles in petty crimes in his spare time. Along with his friends, he makes his spending money through a variety of illegal scams - but as time progresses, the group realizes there's a lot more money to be made in far more dangerous schemes. They begin dealing drugs, which is just the beginning of their downward spiral.

The first half of Better Luck Tomorrow is easily its most effective, with Lin painting an intriguing portrait of high school life in the suburbs. It almost seems as though the film's going to be another Larry Clark type of thing, with a variety of well-to-do kids killing time and relishing the absence of their parents. But the twist here is that Ben is actually a good student, and even notes that he and his friends are able to get away with anything as long as they keep their grades up. It's the sheer boredom of surburban living that compels Ben to participate in petty scams - an involvement that eventuually turns Ben and his friends into a gang of sorts.

It's at that point - when the film essentially turns into yet another story involving the rise-and-fall of several characters - that the originality of the first half hour of Better Luck Tomorrow begins to seep away. There's virtually nothing in this section of the film that we haven't seen before countless times, most notably in Scorsese flicks like Goodfellas and Casino. Fortunately, Lin infuses even the most cliched aspects of the screenplay with a sense of style that's never overbearing; with the exception of a short party sequence, Lin's directorial flourishes certainly elevate the film to more than just another story about good-folks-gone-bad.

Though Shen's a relative newcomer, he nevertheless manages to give a performance that's completely convincing. It's not an easy role to play; Ben's a character that has to straddle the thin line between naivete and cynicism. Shen turns Ben into someone most of us will be able to relate to, so that even when he's doing these horrible things, we're still rooting for the guy. The majority of the supporting cast is comprised of unfamiliar faces (with the exception of John Cho as Steve, who most viewers will recognize as the person who peed on Stifler in American Pie 2) that are extremely effective in their respective roles.

Better Luck Tomorrow has been the source of some controversy due to the fact that it revolves around Asian characters that aren't exactly wholesome. It's a silly complaint, especially considering the film never makes their ethnicity an issue. This is one of the first (if not the first) movies to contain an all-Asian cast that could've starred a bunch of white actors, without making any changes to the script. And though the film's somewhat uneven in its execution, Lin's inventive direction assures that it's never boring.