BLT: Was that really her in the p0rn?

CURRENT RATINGS:

 7/10

Movie:

Better Luck Tomorrow (2003)

END MOODS/CURRENTS

| Entry | While I was back in California last week I made sure to pick up a copy of Justin Lin's debut solo feature 'Better Luck Tomorrow'....

Yes I never actually got a chance to see it back when it came out -- despite seeing a lot of the other stuff like ' Yellow' and 'Shopping For Fangs'... and even attending a lecture by Quentin Lee and Justin Lin on campus at UCB back in the day.

And now that I'm like best buddies with Mr. J. Tobin, who often is introduced as 'that guy from '... I was feeling a bit embarrassed to not have actually seen it. (I DID go see Tokyo Drift... if that makes up for it). :-P

In case you're not familiar with it, ' BLT' tells the story of four successful Asian American high school students who get mixed up in crime, despite, or because of their over achieving honor role appearance. The movie opens with a crime and then flashes back to show how our seemingly average American teens ended up in this situation.

There's a lot of moral ambiguity in the film, and the ending leaves a lot of questions about what will happen to the characters... there isn't really any justice or payback distributed at the end of the film, so I think some of the critics claims that its too cynical (or amoral) are not unfounded...

BUT who said that a movie HAS to show the bad guy getting shown the consequences of their actions? I don't think this film glorifies crime in any way, which can't be said for movies which have a much more moral finale...

I agree that Jason did a great job in the film. His character Virgil is by far the most dynamic and emotive of the four main characters. He looks a lot different than now too, I heard he slimmed down a lot for the film. (he's quite buffed out nowadays).

But writing wise, I think his character and some of the other ones are a bit too one dimensional or cliched. Virgil = unstable loser, Ben = goodie-two-shoes protagonist, Han = always looking cool, Daric = evil genius...

It has been 5-6 years or so since this thing was made, I'm not sure how well it stands the test of time... looking back now it doesn't seem to be groundbreakingly stylish anything like the hype back in '03 led me to believe... Aside from Jason's performance, the only thing I found really remarkable about it was the good quality they were able to achieve on such a limited budget.

I think moving outside of the US has changed my perspective on the 'Asian-American' aspect of it too, so maybe my view is skewed. After living in Japan and now HK, I find my tolerance for Asian-Am identity stuff to be a bit lower than it used to be. :-P