April 9, 2003

Better Luck Tomorrow strives for success.

By Kimberly Chun

NOT TOO LONG ago, I encountered a collection of Chinese American sixth graders, wriggling in their seats on the 38 Geary and holding forth on their brand of fast-tracked assimilation. "Fresh off the boat, first year, ESL classes," one kid decked out in Tommy Hilfiger and Air Jordans announced, describing his peers' "mandatory" high-speed curriculum. "Second year, English-only classes. Third year, honors classes. Fourth year, valedictorian."

It was a model minority-jabbing scene that could have been easily woven into director-cowriter-producer Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow. Like its characters, Better Luck Tomorrow comes off like an early acceptance-style academic overachiever. It makes all the right moves and is ready for the big leagues with MTV backing, yet is still a little too eager to please. Lin crafts a film that tries its best to be all things for all viewers – fresh, funny teen dramedy, heartstring-tugging coming-of-age yarn, baby gangbanger's crime flick. (The New York Times recently reported that Lin even reedited the film and altered the ending in response to audience reactions, after MTV acquired the movie.)

At first Better Luck Tomorrow appears to be your standard Afterschool Special revenge tale – make that the revenge of the nerds – set in an anonymous southern California suburb. Ben (Parry Shen) is your archetypal Asian studyholic: he applies himself to extracurricular activities, after-school jobs, lunchtime clubs, and free-throw practice with a manic will to power. He strides through the halls, as other students pass in slow motion – or in the next jump cut, using one of Lin's favorite devices, speed around like rats from a chem lab. But despite his academic prowess he's completely invisible. Ben's crew does its best to tweak the stereotypes: there's Virgil (Jason Tobin), the "other smart guy at school" and a goofy, squeaky spazz; Virgil's brother Han (Sung Kang), a cool would-be greaser with a muscle car; and Daric (Roger Fan), an obnoxious Max Fischer archetype who has his hand in every school club and, later, every scam. The unattainable object of their affection and the rumored subject of a very obtainable porn film is button-nosed cheerleader Stephanie (Karin Anna Cheung). The target of their envy is her boyfriend, Steve (John Cho), a wealthy private school student with a smug air of superiority and a secret to hide.

The plot then takes a U-turn for the second two-thirds of the film and draws from its title's seeming inspiration, A Better Tomorrow, John Woo's 1986 good-bad buddy-brother hit, which carved out a place for H.K. action at the Hollywood cafeteria. In suddenly plunging into that audience-pleasing genre, perhaps Lin also sought some popularity with his fellow UC Los Angeles film school graduates.

Better Luck Tomorrow's male bonding and search for identity are loaded with racial conflict. Rites of passage are triggered when the academic Asian superkids discover all is not cool in the (white) mainstream at school, at parties, among even their own friends. Ben, for example, gets his first taste of being exploited for his racial identity after Daric does a story for the school paper on his friend's role as the token Asian benchwarmer on the varsity basketball team. Daric gets a journalism award and Ben becomes a cause célèbre for campus activists, but it's only a short tumble from a kind of sunbaked 'burby innocence to a speed-and-booze-fried state of corruption as Ben and eventually Virgil and Han begin stealing tests and dashing off lucrative cheat sheets for Daric.

Later our wanna-be premed heroes go med-evil on the ass of a drunken, hate-spewing jock – pistol-whipping the creep and then repeatedly kicking him in the stomach in a way that makes you feel fear for the kids but touches little of the heightened, protracted horror of, say, Irréversible. Better to subtitle Better Luck Tomorrow as Inevitable for its clear, almost clichéd, melodramatic arc before and after its murderous climax, right after the crew's victim, who's Asian and happens to be double-crossing a sister and dating a white girl, sarcastically points out, "This is where the Asians hang out?"

"Yeah, the library was closed," Daric retorts.

"Hey, you're a funny guy for an Oriental."

If anything, Better Luck Tomorrow suffers a little from its visual and cerebral brightness. There's a patch too much lightness, and its evocation of a late-'90s time and place of infinite possibilities, as well as once-edgy and now totally over haircuts, ends up offering nothing more than a random "whatever" at the conclusion to all of the drama.

Better Luck Tomorrow succeeds better at infusing the secret life of the Asian nerd with an unprecedented level of sexiness and humor that makes up a bit for the sins of Donger in that überteen flick Sixteen Candles. We can all imagine what would happen if the culture's tenacity, skills, and pressure to excel were applied to theft and scams instead of tests and study sessions. Now if only Lin would take a lesson from the breezy, resonant scene that opens the film, during which Ben and Virgil hear a cellie ringing, and it isn't theirs. When they realize it might have been buried with the victim of their cutthroat striving, they get down on their hands and knees, scramble across the lawn, put their ears to the ground, and start listening to the earth. That's where the answer is, and if all of the ambitious rugrats and relentless grinds also revisited the place where the bodies are buried and developed a conscience, there might yet be a better tomorrow.