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Here’s the stuff, the real stuff, the reason to keep believing
that independent filmmaking has more to offer than the edgy,
hipster-ish feature-length commercials being cycled through
the “indie” arms of major studios. Better Luck Tomorrow
is such a good film that it may start off a whole ’nother
wave of crazy bidding as distributors haunt film festivals
looking for the next Better Luck Tomorrow.
Better Luck Tomorrow is smart, a product of close
observation of adolescents, and like most intelligent films,
it raises questions without feeding you answers. The main
characters, mostly males, live in generic, affluent suburbia
and attend a generic vast warehouse of a high school. They
lead the lives of the stereotypical Asian or Asian-American
student—high GPAs, lots of clubs and extracurricular activities,
part-time jobs, SAT drills—all focusing on the deadly earnest
competition for admissions to prestigious colleges. The story
kick-starts when over-achiever Ben Manibag (Shen) lets
a fellow student copy his answers during a test. Later Daric
(Fan) approaches Ben about supplying cheat sheets for
profit. Ben knows it’s wrong, not to mention the fact that
the payoff—a mere $50 per sheet—is hardly compensation for
the possible consequences of getting caught. Still… so bright,
so busy, so bored. And a mind is a terrible thing to
waste. Ben enters the cheat-sheet business, and soon brings
along Virgil (Tobin), a super-smart, socially retarded,
wannabe gangster he’s known from elementary school days. With
Virgil’s cousin Han (Kang), Ben and Virgil were already
running a scam involving buying and returning/reselling electronics,
just to fight the ennui.
Daric insinuates himself into Ben’s life, first by writing
a school newspaper article about Ben’s position as the token
Asian on the JV basketball team, then through the unusual
Academic Decathlon (think College Bowl) prep sessions he hosts.
Ben’s voiceover fills us in on the evolution of the foursome,
who soon come to resemble nothing so much as Asian juvenile
goodfellas. Indeed, the movie’s opening, which involves the
identification of a mysterious noise, is something of a Goodfellas
homage. The similarities continue as these brainiacs progress
from the small change of cheat sheets to fencing stolen goods
to selling drugs. Who knew academic dishonesty was a gateway
crime?
Through it all, the young crooks keep their eyes on the prize.
Despite fat wads of cash and a growing and enviable reputation
in their school, there are still college applications to be
completed and Academic Decathlons to be won. Crime is just
another extracurricular activity, albeit one that they, unlike
Risky Business’s Joel Goodson, will not parlay into
college application material. Furthermore, Ben becomes peculiarly
involved with his Stephanie Vandergosh (Cheung), a
cheerleader and academic whiz who’s running for student council.
Her boyfriend Steve (Cho), one of the gang’s good customers,
asks Ben to escort Stephanie to public events like club banquets
and school formals. Initially Ben is too weirded out by being
essentially contracted to spend time with the girl he has
admired, but in time Stephanie and Ben overcome the awkwardness
of the situation. Interestingly, we the audience are clearly
able to see what this extremely bright and together young
man cannot—that proximity to what he very much wants and may
not be able to have is messing with him.
Shen plays Ben perfectly, showing us the stolid performance
of an academic machine on the outside, and itchy intelligence
and confusion on the inside. Ben’s progress through the various
stages of criminal development coincide with title cards that
define the various words he repeats unfailingly each day to
boost his vocabulary for the SATs. In fact, all the actors
do well, particularly when conveying the intoxication of stepping
outside their acknowledged personas. Tobin is especially good
as Virgil, the kind of insecure, all-talk guy who never shuts
up; that guy you’re glad enough to run into then are itching
to smack upside the head two minutes later. He could easily
have come off as some weaselly, Barney Fife joke of a character
but for the humanity Tobin gives him.
Eventually, though, living more than one life can get mighty
uncomfortable. Even more discomfiting, it may not be possible
to take up one’s previous existence. I’ll not say more about
the plot, but not because Better Luck Tomorrow is about
some huge, shocker of a twist at the end. Yes, there’s stuff
that could be given away if I were to continue, but the gift
of this movie is who its characters become, or rather, who
they are revealed to be, both to us and to themselves. Not
that you can necessarily do anything with that knowledge,
even if you would seem to have all the luck in the world going
for you.
—Roxanne Bogucka
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out of 5
While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
