Better Luck Tomorrow

This week we watched the film Better Luck Tomorrow.  This movie told the story of a group of Asian-American overachievers who had top grades in high school and were aiming to get into Ivy League universities. However, they fell into a life of drugs, violence, and crime. The movie showed how one bad decision can quickly snowball into worse and worse decisions until it seems like there is no going back. The movie culminates with the group’s murder of another Asian-American student and the attempted suicide of one of the perpetrators. The movie was apparently partially based on a real murder that unfolded in a similar fashion. I found the movie to be a challenging watch as there were really no “good guys.” The characters let the allure of hedonism and the catharsis of aggression tempt them into throwing away their promising futures. Even the murder victim was a narcissistic misogynist who tried to stage a robbery against his own parents. I don’t think that this movie’s portrayal of Asian-Americans in problematic, because movies should be able to show a character of any race as either a good or bad person. Their are white heroes and white villains, black heroes and black villains. However, Asian-Americans are less represented in Hollywood that white or black or Hispanic people. For example, I can’t think of a single Asian-American cast member on Saturday Night Live, even though I could list tons of white and black ones. This issue of under-representation means that audiences have less examples of Asian-American heroes. While I can understand this is a problem, I believe that the director’s only responsibility is to tell the story he or she wants to tell, and I think that’s just what Justin Lin did here.