Better Luck Tomorrow (2003)
Directed by Justin Lin
A group of over-achieving Asian-American high school seniors enjoy a power trip when they dip into extra-curricular criminal activities.
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What critics compared Better Luck Tomorrow to
(The precedents include 1993’s The Joy Luck Club, 2004’s Memoirs of a Geisha, 2006’s Letters from Iwo Jima, and my favorite in this list, Justin Lin’s sizzling 2002 teen-rebel movie, Better Luck Tomorrow.)
The Joy Luck Club is the most full-throated chorus about the heft of immigrant parent expectations, the theme that's become a maybe too stubbornly inescapable throughline in Asian American output, from Justin Lin's not-your-model-minority 2002 debut Better Luck Tomorrow to Master of None to the most recent Pixar short .
While that sentiment holds largely true, it’s not wholly accurate; those behind the labeling likely forgot about “Better Luck Tomorrow,” the 2002 curio from director Justin Lin (of the “Fast and Furious” and “Star Trek” franchises) about overachieving high schoolers.
While the outcome is obvious (generic rules apply), Jackson is sharp and relatively restrained (no "And you will know my name is the Lord" type speeches), and Mark Schwahn and John Gatins' script makes an effort to complicate the characters, despite the conventional situations and stereotypes (watch out for the Asian kid who doesn't speak a complete sentence, but appears repeatedly, looking enthusiastic in multiple team shots, usually on the bench at games: the token Better Luck Tomorrow took apart persists, apparently unconsidered).
Director Justin Lin ( Better Luck Tomorrow ) gives us some exhilarating racing sequences, going from close-up cuts to slo-mo shots as cars zip, flip, glide and burn as much rubber as possible.
Promising young Taiwanese-American director Justin Lin, whose low-budget high school crime story "Better Luck Tomorrow" was a hit at Sundance a few years ago, was saddled with a tepid script in his first Hollywood production, "Annapolis."
Strange, but logical, acutally, for two reasons -- the director this time is Justin Lin, who was responsible for the new skewed-angle view of Asian-Americans in Better Luck Tomorrow ; and the side effect of The Fast and the Furious franchise has consistently been its helping to mold a newer, more current view of youth culture for the multiplexes.
People who consider his Better Luck Tomorrow a hard-hitting portrait of Asian-American tension (I don't) will want to excavate thematic links from the franchise's latest locale, the Tokyo of glitz and neon and schoolgirls cheering for the nocturnal rumbles, though the macho-maturation arc is probably far closer to the teen-underdog mildness of Lin's previous dud, Annapolis.
Perhaps learning from "2 Fast", director Justin Lin, who wrote and directed the wonderful "Better Luck Tomorrow", dispenses with formalities and puts the rubber to the road almost immediately.
The film marks another step down for once-promising director Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow), whose Annapolis was a major disappointment earlier in the year.