Another coming of age movie, but this time the main characters are Asian American kids stuck in a rich school. It was entertaining, and follows the same plot as most of the coming of age high school movies do. Teenage angst over fitting in, with a dash of a love story sprinkled on top. Drugs, money and murder. Yes, every high school kids experience… so Hollywood tells us.
The film starts off with a flash back, and the rest of the movie is the events leading up to the day they saw their first dead body.
Ben the main character is a smart kid, he is a decathlete and tries out for the basket ball team. Has a crush on the cute head cheerleader, who is outta his league he thinks. He has goals of being a pro basket ball player and he spends hours in the park practicing his free throws. He wants to beat a pro ball players average and keeps a log of his daily free throws and tracks his percentages. He works at a fast food restaurant and studies in his free time.
Ben’s one friend is a super goofy guy who plays a stereo typical gangster kid named Vergil. They are an odd couple, but they are close friends. You get the feel that Ben and Vergil are just friends because neither of them have any other friends at school.
Ben ends up making the basketball team, but doesn’t ever get put in the game. He doesn’t think anything of it, he is just happy to be on the team. Daric one of the other decathletes, interviews Ben for the school newspaper and asks him some loaded questions about his role as the “Token Asian” on the basketball team. Ben thinks, “Everyone has their rolls.” He laughs it off and tells Daric to ask the coach. Ben busted his ass to get on the team, and he doesn’t get why Daric would ask him that. The article is published and Ben’s high school career starts to change. He suddenly has “fans” who start showing up at the games and approaching him in the halls. They say they are proud of him and start chanting “Let Ben play!!” at games. This pisses Ben off as he see’s they might be right. The chanting gets to the point the coach has no choice but to let Ben play, “get the fuck in there” he screams. The next day Ben quits the team.
Ben’s is approached by Daric again, this time he has a business opportunity for him. Daric wants to take advantage of Ben’s smarts, and offers him cash to start making cheat sheets. Ben’s is against it at first but eventually rethinks the offer. Their greed quickly escalates into running receipt scam with Vergil and a Miami Vice looking kid named Han. They start to make money, and Ben gets power hungry. The power becomes addicting to Ben, he likes feeling excepted and having people paying him for their cheat sheets.
Ben eventually meets Steve the boyfriend of the head cheerleader Stephanie who he’s had a crush on. Steve is a decathlete from another prep school, and Ben gets dirt on him. He see’s Steve hanging around with other girls. Vergil tells Ben to tell Stephanie, but Ben refuses to. He doesn’t want to get in the middle of their drama.
Soon the motley crew move into selling drugs, and like most drug dealers. They start doing the drugs they sell and partying nonstop. This spirals out of control, but the money and company of girls along the way keep them in the game for a while. Ben wakes up in a pile of blood, and freaks out. He is over this life style and he wants out of their business. He wants to start focusing on his own goals again.
Eventually Steve approaches Ben’s crew to do a job for him. Steve wants to “teach his parents a lesson”, by having their house robbed. None of the guys like Steve, and they plan to double cross Steve. Ben doesn’t want to have anything to do with this plan and starts to pull away from the guys. The guys still talk him into just being lookout for their plan. They plan to rob Steve and turn him into the cops to teach him a lesson. Steve shows up to a garage, Ben stays outside watching out and things go horribly wrong. There is a fight, a gun goes off Steve is shot. Ben runs in to see Steve, Vergil, and Han standing there, and Steve is laying on the floor in a pile of blood. They think Steve is dead, when he begins to move. Ben picks up a shovel and beats him to death. Was pretty graphic and chaotic.
The guys end up at a New Years party, all acting pretty gloom. Ben ends up getting a new years kiss from Stephanie who was bummed out her asshole boyfriend hadn’t showed up. You can see the spark between the two when they kiss. I think they had been waiting for the kiss for a while.
the boys are all having personal battles with the murder. Now that Daric and Ben left the business to Han and Vergil, all hell breaks loose for those two. They end up getting caught selling the test scores and Hans, whoops Vergils ass. Vergil freaks out and tries to kill himself, Hans was outside the door when this happened. It really fucked up Hans.
Ben goes back to his daily routine of practicing his free throws in the park and building his vocabulary like he did in the beginning of the movie. Things have come full circle and they have to live with the affects of their actions. As the movie ends Ben says, “All I know is there is no turning back.”