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Written, directed, produced and edited by Justin Lin, Better Luck Tomorrow is quite unlike the teen comedies of the time, and plays more like a high school tragi-drama. Though Lin declared that the film is not based on any real life event, similarities led to it being linked to the death of student Stuart Tay, on New Year’s Eve in 1992, by four fellow students.

Ben Manibag (Shen) appears to be the grade-A student we’re all so secretly jealous of. However, he and his friend Virgil (Tobin), apparently the other smart kid, lead a double life of petty crime, along with Virgil’s cousin Han (Kang). They soon team up with the high school’s highest ranked model student Daric (Fan), who ropes Ben into more risky scams that bring in plenty of money; however, the consequences soon catch up with them. Their situation becomes more dangerous after accepting an offer from Steve (Cho), the boyfriend of Stephanie (Cheung), who Ben just so happens to have a crush on.

Even though the lead characters are Asian Americans, the film very rarely slips into racial stereotypes. Because their background doesn’t even come into it, the characters could really be anybody, and the story would likely still come out the same. Almost anyone who’s been a teenager can relate to some of the issues that Ben is going through, regardless of ethnicity. However, whether a different ethnicity would have resulted in more or less exposure for the film is a different matter altogether.

“Our straight A’s were our alibis,” says Ben. “As long as our grades were there, we were trusted.” Sucking it in and getting good grades on subjects that may never even be useful to them in the long term is just their cover, as they use their intelligence to profit in some easy money via petty crimes. Is this the possible future of the next generation? It’s not so hard for the teenagers to get alcohol, so it appears to be miraculously easy for them to get a hold of guns. The reason for it all? “It was suburbia. We had nothing better to do,” says Ben. A teenager doesn’t need a better excuse than that.

That no one would suspect them because of their grades shows how everyone has a dark side. Even Stephanie, Ben’s crush, is rumored to be in a porn film, though no one knows for sure! Amusingly, Stephanie has heard of the rumor and jokes about it with Ben! Amid the drama, there is humor, though it is often dark and edgy. Be it Han buying beer with his fake ID; the reason for attending a party (“You just hear about it and you go.”); and Steve asking Daric “How’s your stroke?”

After Ben suffers a nosebleed from an overdose, it seems clear that he wants out and he discusses this with the rest of the guys. It’s the kind of thing you expect to see at the end of the film, except that this scene comes at the halfway mark, and the film becomes unpredictable from this point on.

After beating someone up at a party, Virgil jokes that his dad is going to kill him, though we never see him. This is the one oddity, in that at no point are any parental figures on screen. Apart from Stephanie, who is seen in a picture with her adoptive parents, mummies and daddies are talked about, but not seen. Family issues are mostly sidestepped altogether, because realistically they would only end up getting in the way. Ben is apparently 16-years-old (though he doesn’t look it), and it’s left rather ambiguous whether or not he is living by himself (it’s a little difficult to believe that he is). Also, without giving too much away, one of the guys does end up in critical condition in hospital, and bizarrely he doesn’t have any of his parents by his bedside.

With a budget of $250,000, so small was the production that even the crew were standing in as extras. Premiering at Sundance in January 2002, Better Luck Tomorrow was acquired by MTV films for $500,000, who along with Paramount, distributed it with a limited release in April 2003. Opening on 13 screens in New York, LA and San Francisco, the budget was recouped on its opening weekend, with a taking of $360,000. It turned out to be a good investment overall, taking $3.7 million after 11 weeks. Soon, similar films with teenage protagonists getting into trouble began premiering at Sundance, including Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen in 2003 and Nick Cassavetes’ Alpha Dog in 2006.

Still largely unheard of, Better Luck Tomorrow in no way advocates that the crimes committed by the four guys are justifiably right, but it does uncomfortably leave off suggesting that you can get away with crime, provided you’re willing to live and cope with the outcomes. Ben’s closing speech attempts to put across the uncertainty of his life, with his good grades contrasted by his actions, and only then did the title actually make a smidgen of sense.

Directed by – Justin Lin

Written by – Ernesto M. Foronda, Justin Lin, Fabian Marquez

Starring – Parry Shen (Ben Manibag), Jason Tobin (Virgil Hu), Sung Kang (Han), Roger Fan (Daric Loo), John Cho (Steve Choe), Karin Anna Cheung (Stephanie Vandergosh)

Length – 99 minutes

Cert – 15 / R