Better Luck Tomorrow

Justin Lin's first feature, set in a Californian high school. Ben and his friends are model students. High grades, clubs, strong college applications. They are also selling cheat sheets, then stealing computer parts, then moving on to heavier things. Nobody suspects them because nobody expects it of them. That is exactly the film's subject: the image of the well-behaved, hard-working Asian American student becomes not an identity for these boys but a shield. It screened at the Sundance film festival in 2002, and the discussion afterwards entered film history. An audience member criticised the film for showing Asian Americans in a negative light; the critic Roger Ebert, in the room, stood up and objected, saying these characters have the same right as anyone else to be whoever they want. Parry Shen, Jason Tobin and Sung Kang are in the cast. Han, the character Kang plays, was carried years later into the Fast and Furious films Lin directed. An important debut for anyone who likes American independent cinema and the hard end of the teenage film. For a viewer looking for a lesson, the film declares no conclusion and does not judge its characters.