Hindsight

My friend Kevin came down to visit on a whim and brought Justin Lin’s “Better Luck Tomorrow” with him on VHS.

First impressions were good. This is another anti-climatic film I’m happy to watch again – it makes me want to get the DVD.

It’s interesting to lurk about a few message boards regarding BLT. Many call the film “unrealistic” regarding Asian Americans. I wasn’t quite the overachiever. But I could relate to some of the onscreen personas. I can say that the acting was done rather well (albeit a few horribly cheesy lines here and there, but nothing too overdone).

According to some trivia, “Better Luck Tomorrow” was based on the murder of Stuart Tay. Cheryl Chen from the University of California, San Francisco, writes an interesting article about it here.

Cheryl says in her article that “ Better Luck Tomorrow, by failing to honor its inspiration, crosses the line between respect and exploitation… . She investigates a Justin Lin interview about the film and its relation to the Stuart Tay murder. Lin claims that his film was not based solely on the events of the murder and that the character profiles are disparate. Still, a lot hits very close to actual events that occured.

It’s scary finding something of fiction and realizing that it could well be based on something real, especially when the film makes no mention of it whatsoever.

Thinking of the film in this new context still makes it a film worth watching, in my opinion. I would like to think that the film does raise questions about Asian Americans who’ve grown up here in the burbs. No one should say that the film is representing the typical mindset of Asian American high school students, but there are facets in each character worth noting anyway, even if they may be stereotypes. Some are true, I should know – I saw them when I went to high school.