Better Luck Tomorrow (2003) - Movie Review
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Parry Shen stars as Ben, one of the smartest seniors in his school who devotes his time to various extracurricular events to beef up his college resume. His closest competitors are also his closest friends, and together they use their minds for good, and some not-so-good. It starts off with some simple scams but soon escalates to riskier crimes, including robbery, drugs and perhaps murder. As the group of friends turns into the most notorious and profitable gangs in the neighborhood, Ben begins to realize just how far he has sunk. But, is it too late to get out?
Better Luck Tomorrow is one of the most gripping, powerful and engaging films of 2003, by far. A combination of original direction, great acting and an intriguing story, it epitomizes the truth of crime nowadays. Is all the crime committed by inner city, black gang bangers as the media depicts, or are suburban kids just as capable, if not more, of becoming criminals?
The movie does have themes involving suburban crime, intelligent crime and youth peer pressure, but director Justin Lin does a good job of blending these into the background, giving him a large percentage of the time to pursue the character and story depth that makes this movie so good. Shen does an incredible job as a young man who is so smart that he doesn't even know what he's doing, and his innocent confusion as to what is going on can be seen in every scene. Lin also captures a key element of youth, Ben's first relationship, with extreme sincerity. In fact, all of the characters, no matter how flawed they be, have an incredible sense of depth to them.
More than anything else, Better Luck Tomorrow is just a captivating story of youth and crime, and in less than two hours we get to see a group of smart and seemingly innocent kids spiral out of control and lead to murder. In many ways, Better Luck Tomorrow has the same "redeeming" qualities that another highly touted film of 2003, Thirteen, has. It is so engaging because you just want the characters to realize what they are doing and stop, but you know it is going to have to get worse before it gets better.
Better Luck Tomorrow is flawless, and will definitely end up in many Top Ten lists.
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Anonymous says:
October 22, 2006while in the search of success, the life of these teens start to spiral downhill. I think the film had some foreshadowing as well such as when stephane and ben were talking and then stephanie comes up w/ the idea of being a cop in which later on she creates an imaginary gun and points it out... aiming it at steve... which this either means for steve's death or for their break up as ben and stephanie begins their new relationship...
Anonymous says:
January 11, 2004love the movie, iam just not understanding why steve-o gets killed, cause he's rich and a little crazy, i really felt bad for the guy.....
Anonymous says:
December 29, 2003boobies
Anonymous says:
December 1, 2003I think this was a good movie...finally, a movie starring Asian Americans as complex protagonists. As far as sending a message about suburbia and such, I think KIDS had much more impact due to it's ability to provide a raw and deep perspective of "teenage" life. I felt like this was a fantasy movie, not very believable. Like Jawbreaker or something.
Anonymous says:
November 17, 2003i like the movie, but the only thing that i didn't like it is when they kill steve,because if you wanted to make the second part he is not going to be in it.