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Better Luck Tomorrow (2003) Certificate 15

Better Luck Tomorrow
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Rated 2.5 stars
Average rating
(50%)
 
Starring: Parry Shen | Jason J. Tobin | Shirley Anderson | Nanette Matoba | Kenji Matoba | Sung Kang
Director: Justin Lin
Studio: PARAMOUNT HOME ENTERTAINMENT
Run time: 95 mins
Genres: Drama | Thriller
Languages: English
Released: July 17, 2006

BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, the first feature film from director and screenwriter Justin Lin, is a dark comedy about Asian-American high school students in suburban Los Angeles. High school student Ben Manibag (Parry Shen) is an overachiever. The polite 16-year-old does well in class, studies diligently for the SATs, works in a fast food restaurant, and is involved with extracurricular activities that will enhance his college applications. Essentially, he is an ideal Ivy League candidate. But when he is befriended by senior Daric Loo (Roger Fan) class valedictorian and captain of the academic decathlon team his life changes. Bit by bit Ben, his best friend Virgil (Jason Tobin), and Virgil's cousin, Han (Sung Kang), are drawn from their boring suburban high school life to Daric's increasingly risky propositions and into a world of petty crime, drugs, and sex. Eventually, the foursome's activities begin to spin out of control, culminating in shocking events that none of them could anticipate...

Highest rated reviews

5 out of 5 people found the following review helpful:

*** May contain spoilers ***


Rated 1.0 stars
Geeks in da hood

Waterboy from from Hertfordshire, 9th July, 2007

If you can believe these 28 year old actors are 17 year old high school kids, you will probably buy the 'Boyz in da chess club' premise of these A grade students becoming the hard boys of their High School. The parents who drive their kids to achieve don't feature in this film, so what we have is perhaps the directors fantasy about what it might have been like to be a 'bad boy', a subject about which he clearly knows nothing. The cast are quite good looking, but miscast and misdirected, unless criminality, drug taking and cheating are the entrance requirements for the best US universities. Dis boy don't buy it.

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3 out of 5 people found the following review helpful:

Rated 4.0 stars
highly stylish and superbly acted!

A Customer from England, 18th July, 2006

The film has a great fresh style and pace to it, Justin Lin's direction is impecable. Slow motion edits, fast cuts, perfect timing with the soundtrack, good cinematography are all apparant and enjoyable and not to annoying as they sometimes can be when they are thrown at you constantly. What's probably the most telling thing about this movie is the focus on Asian-Americans in a not so seen light. All these kids have the world ahead of them, perfect grades, homes, money, but they are all dead inside and lacking direction. It doesn't help also that their parents in the film are nowhere to be seen, and no doubt non existent. All the trappings of success and great intelligence that the kids have is no match for there lack of faith and spiritual deadness which Better Luck Tomorrow shows off impecably!

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1 out of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Rated 1.0 stars
Way too slow.

A Customer from Bristol, 9th March, 2007

Possibly could have been saved with better editing but I doubt it! Really wouldn't recommend hiring this one, an hour and a half of my life that I'm never going to get back again.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Rated 1.0 stars
More like a snooze comedy than a black comedy!

A Customer from North London, 28th October, 2006

Slow paced, took really long for the plot to develop. Nothing new to this except the main actors were all Asian.

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Most recent reviews

Rated 4.0 stars
greeds own consuming greed

Koppert from , 8th November, 2007

Interesting for its non stereotypical dramatisation of a group of asians in an american high school. the group get lustful for power but fall victims to its own consuming greeed. Interesting film

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