Better Luck Tomorrow

Better Luck Tomorrow is a 2002 American independent crime drama film directed by Justin Lin. The film is about Asian American overachievers who become bored with their lives and enter a world of petty crime and material excess. Better Luck Tomorrow introduced film audiences to a cast including Parry Shen, Jason Tobin, Sung Kang, Roger Fan, and John Cho. The film tells a purely fictional story of youth violence, drawing inspiration from several sources, including the Columbine shootings and the murder of Stuart Tay, a teenager from Orange County, California.[2]

Better Luck Tomorrow
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJustin Lin
Written by
  • Ernesto Foronda
  • Justin Lin
  • Fabian Marquez
Produced by
  • Justin Lin
  • Julie Asato
  • Ernesto Foronda
Starring
CinematographyPatrice Lucien Cochet
Edited byJustin Lin
Music by
  • Michael Gonzales
  • Tobin Mori
Production
companies
  • Hudson River Entertainment
  • Cherry Sky Films
  • Day O Productions
  • Trailing Johnson Productions
Distributed byParamount Pictures
MTV Films
Release dates
  • January 12, 2002 (2002-01-12) (Sundance)
  • April 11, 2003 (2003-04-11) (United States)
Running time
101 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$250,000[1]
Box office$3.8 million[1]

Crucial funding for the film came from MC Hammer, whom Lin had met in April 2001 at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, Nevada.[3] "Out of desperation, I called up MC Hammer because he had read the script and liked it. Two hours later, he wired the money we needed into a bank account and saved us," Lin said.[4] MC Hammer is credited as a producer of the film.[5]

Better Luck Tomorrow debuted at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, and was subsequently acquired by MTV Films, its first-ever acquisition. MTV Films teamed with Paramount Pictures to release the film theatrically in the United States on April 11, 2003.[6][7]

Plot

Ben Manibag is a stereotypical overachieving Asian American in a wealthy Orange County suburb whose goals are to make his high school basketball team, get with his cheerleader crush Stephanie and to get into a prestigious Ivy League university. His perfectionism masks another side of his life, which is toilet-papering houses with his best friend Virgil and engaging in petty crime with Virgil's cousin Han Lue.

Though Ben makes the basketball team, he ends up being mostly a benchwarmer. Through Daric Loo, senior valedictorian and president of nearly every student club, Ben gets involved in a school-wide cheat sheet operation. Daric pays Jesus, another student, to steal the tests from the school office, and Ben uses the tests to make cheat sheets which are then sold off to students. Ben brings Virgil and Han into the racket, and the four of them make a small fortune. Meanwhile, Ben finds himself competing with Steve Choe, a private school student and Stephanie's boyfriend, for Stephanie's affections. Steve discovers Ben's crush and offers to let him take Stephanie to the Winter Formal.

The group's activities gradually escalate into more dangerous crimes, such as the theft of computer parts from the school and selling drugs. They become users themselves, with Ben developing a heavy cocaine habit. Feeling increasingly conflicted by the expectations others have of him, and horrified at waking up with a nosebleed due to his cocaine use, Ben decides to quit the group. He resumes his academic pursuits and begins spending more time with Stephanie. He eventually asks her to the formal; she accepts.

After the Winter Formal dance, Ben is lured back to his life of crime when Steve meets with Ben and tells him he has information on a possible score. The group is stunned when Steve reveals he wants them to rob his parents' house. Though Ben and Han are initially against it, Daric convinces the group this would be the perfect opportunity to teach the haughty Steve a lesson.

On New Year's Eve, the four meet Steve at Jesus's house under the pretense of robbing Steve's parents, but Daric, Virgil and Han begin attacking Steve while Ben keeps watch outside. In the ensuing struggle Steve gets Virgil's gun which goes off. Ben runs in and, seeing the gun in Steve's hand, beats Steve with a baseball bat. The group convinces Jesus to bury the body in his backyard for $300. Steve begins to twitch, revealing he's still alive, but Daric suffocates Steve with a gasoline-soaked rag while a tearful Virgil holds his arms back. Afterwards, the four go to a New Year's Eve party, where Ben and Stephanie kiss at midnight.

The next day, while cleaning up the aftermath of the murder, Ben and Virgil hear Steve's phone ringing under the ground in Jesus's backyard. They dig it up and learn it was a call from Stephanie. Ben debates on whether to report Steve's murder to the police. The guilt over Steve's murder is too much for Virgil, who attempts suicide, but fails and suffers potential brain damage. Daric expresses concern about Han or Virgil reporting the murder, but Ben simply resolves to do nothing and walks away.

At the end of the film, Ben is shown alone. He encounters Stephanie one day on the way home. She asks him whether he has seen Steve lately, and expresses some concern that he has not called. They kiss, implying the resumption of their relationship. Ben's voice-over tells the audience that he has no idea about what the future holds, but all he knows is that there is no turning back.

Cast
  • Parry Shen as Ben Manibag, a straight-A student who commits petty crimes to express himself in other ways
  • Jason Tobin as Virgil Hu, Ben's friend since the fourth grade
  • Sung Kang as Han Lue, Virgil's cousin
  • Roger Fan as Daric Loo, the violent, self-centered, senior class valedictorian
  • John Cho as Steve Choe, Stephanie's boyfriend
  • Karin Anna Cheung as Stephanie Vandergosh
  • Jerry Mathers as The Biology Teacher
  • Ryan Cadiz as Jesus Navarro

Production

Justin Lin said that the title "Better Luck Tomorrow" refers to how the film explores "the whole youth culture of today, specifically Asian-American, but also just the general mentality of teenagers today. I mean, I work with teenagers, I grew up in the 80s, and already it's very different, the mentality. You go to suburbia, you look at upper-middle-class-kids, and through the media they've literally adopted an urban-gangsta-mentality."[8]

While writing the script, he found inspiration in his work as a youth basketball coach and teaching high school students how to make community documentaries.[9]

Originally the film was going to be shot in digital-video, but within two weeks, after Fujifilm and later Kodak proposed deals with the director, the filming switched to 35 mm.[8]

Sung Kang had originally wanted to play Ben Manibag.[10]

Lin's original investors wanted a white cast with Macaulay Culkin as the male lead if he wanted a million dollar investment for his movie.[11][12] Lin objected and continued to fund the project with his 10 credit cards and life savings.[13][9] He said knowing the film "potentially could’ve been the last film I ever made" he wanted to make it "about issues that were very important to me.”[9]

After those funds were depleted, finishing funds equivalent to one third of the film’s budget were provided by Cherry Sky Films for post-production, preparing the film to submit to Sundance, after producer Joan Huang reconnected with Lin at the LA Asian Pacific American Film Festival. Lin also brought in an additional $10,000 from artist MC Hammer, whom he had met while working at the Japanese American National Museum.[10][11]

Connection to the Fast & Furious franchise

Director Justin Lin later directed multiple films in the Fast & Furious franchise, with Kang reprising his role as Han Lue. Better Luck Tomorrow was subsequently recognized as Han's origin story, retconning the film to the Fast & Furious franchise.[14][15]

Reception

Critical reception

The film was rated "certified fresh" with an approval rating of 81% by the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 106 reviews with an average rating of 7.03/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A promising work by Lin, the energetic Better Luck Tomorrow is disturbing and thought-provoking."[16] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 67 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[17]

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote "Lin is a talent to watch. There's a sting to this film that gets to you."[18] Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a full four-star-rating and wrote that it was a "disturbing and skillfully-told parable about growing up in today's America" and that Lin "reveals himself as a skilled and sure director."[19] In 2018, Jane Yong Kim of The Atlantic wrote the film "[complicates] the question of Asian American representation in Hollywood in ways that still resonate deeply today."[20]

Release

Better Luck Tomorrow opened on 13 screens on April 11, 2003,[1] earning the highest per-screen average of any in film release at the time.[9]

Much of the film’s success was attributed to grassroots campaigning by young Asian-American viewers,[21] particularly college students, who promoted the film on school campuses and online.[9]

Awards and film festivals
  • Official Selection and Grand Jury Prize Nomination – Sundance Film Festival, 2002. In a question and answer session following a festival screening, in response to an audience member who asked director Lin if he thought it was irresponsible to portray Asian-Americans in such a negative light, Roger Ebert stood up and said, angrily, "What I find very offensive and condescending about your statement is nobody would say to a bunch of white filmmakers, 'How could you do this to your people?'". And then he continued: "This film has the right to be about these people, and Asian-Americans have the right to be whatever the hell they want to be. They do not have to 'represent' their people."[9][11] Ebert's approval of the film drew the attention of major studios, leading eventually to MTV's buying the film for distribution.[22][23][24]
  • Official Selection – Toronto International Film Festival, 2002. Lin said reception at the Toronto festival was notably different than Sundance with the audience more interested in discussing the state of youth rather than the race of the ethnicity of the actors. “In America, most of the time, I can’t even get into talking about the issues, because they’re just stuck on race," he said.[9]
  • Independent Spirit Awards – John Cassavetes Award Nomination, 2004[25]

See also

References
  1. "Better Luck Tomorrow". Box Office Mojo.
  2. Yi, Daniel (April 6, 2003). "They're the bad seeds?". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on March 21, 2006. Retrieved March 18, 2008.
  3. Lin, Lynda (April 10, 2003). "Movie Review: "Better Luck Tomorrow" breaks stereotypes". AsiansInAmerica.org. Archived from the original on July 29, 2005. Retrieved December 26, 2021.
  4. "New movie displays original view of Asian American films". The Daily Princetonian. May 9, 2003. Archived from the original on June 14, 2011. Retrieved November 16, 2010.
  5. "MC Hammer Biography". Sing365.com. Archived from the original on July 15, 2012. Retrieved November 16, 2010.
  6. Morales, Wilson. "better luck tomorrow". Blackfilm.com. Retrieved July 12, 2020.
  7. Hill, Logan (May 19, 2016). "Meet Justin Lin, the Most Important Blockbuster Director You've Never Heard Of". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved April 7, 2022.
  8. Aderer, Konrad (May 20, 2011). "Justin Lin: Getting Better All The Time". Asian American Film. Archived from the original on September 23, 2015. Retrieved December 26, 2021.
  9. Friend, David (April 25, 2003). "Lucky Today, Better Luck Tomorrow: Justin Lin talks about Better Luck Tomorrow". Entertainment Online. Archived from the original on December 17, 2004. Retrieved December 26, 2021.
  10. Yamato, Jen; Shyong, Frank (May 19, 2020). "Sung Kang". Asian Enough (Podcast). Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 19, 2020.
  11. Wong, Alex (August 16, 2018). "How Dare You Represent Your People That Way: The Oral History of 'Better Luck Tomorrow'". GQ. Archived from the original on August 23, 2018. Retrieved April 10, 2023.
  12. Ryzik, Melena (February 24, 2016). "What It's Really Like to Work in Hollywood (*If you're not a straight white man.)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on May 21, 2022. Retrieved June 16, 2022.
  13. Fleming, Mike Jr. (June 3, 2015). "Justin Lin Talks Wet Cement at Chinese Theater, 'Star Trek 3,' 'True Detective' And His Foray Into Chinese Film". Deadline. Retrieved April 10, 2023.
  14. Robinson, Will (June 16, 2016). "Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift: Here's the story of Han". Entertainment Weekly.
  15. Fuge, Jonathan (February 8, 2020). "#JusticeForHan Is What Brought F9 Director Justin Lin Back to the Franchise". MovieWeb. Retrieved February 9, 2020.
  16. "Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved April 12, 2020.
  17. "Better Luck Tomorrow Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  18. Travers, Peter (April 11, 2003). "Better Luck Tomorrow". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on October 29, 2022. Retrieved October 29, 2022.
  19. Ebert, Roger (April 11, 2003). "Better Luck Tomorrow". Chicago Sun-Times.
  20. Kim, Jane Yong (August 21, 2018). "How Better Luck Tomorrow Argued for Its Existence, 15 Years Ago". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on August 22, 2018. Retrieved December 26, 2021.
  21. Yoshino, Kimi (April 11, 2003). "An E-mail push for 'Better Luck'". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on April 16, 2023. Retrieved April 16, 2023.
  22. Downey, Ryan J. (April 3, 2003). "'Better Luck Tomorrow' Gets People Talking About Asian-American Stereotypes". MTV. Archived from the original on March 21, 2022. Retrieved December 26, 2021.
  23. "Better Luck Tomorrow". All Things Considered. National Public Radio. January 23, 2003.
  24. "A Sundance success story". Los Angeles Times. April 24, 2003. Retrieved April 16, 2023.
  25. "19th Independent Spirit Awards Coverage (2004)". Digitalhit.com. Archived from the original on December 31, 2003. Retrieved December 26, 2021.

Further reading
  • Brook, Vincent (January 1, 2013). Land of Smoke and Mirrors: A Cultural History of Los Angeles. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-5458-7.
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