Screen Scenes

“Better Luck Tomorrow”

“Now I get to live the rest of my life like a
schnook,” said Martin Scorsese’s character, ending his
journey through the darkest circles of the mafia.

“For the first time in my life, I didn’t know what
was going to happen next,” concludes director Justin
Lin’s own Ray Liotta, Parry Shen, a post-pubescent kid who
gets his kicks from antics that should land him in an Orange County
prison instead of Stanford.

The parallels between “Goodfellas” and “Better
Luck Tomorrow,” are obvious, but it’s in the
discrepancies where Lin is most fascinating ““ the highfalutin
goals of his four actors reside solely in the parochial window of
high school where good grades compensate for moral deficiency, and
the only retribution is the implicit assurance that college
acceptance letters win your soul back from the devil.

It’s a stunningly perceptive premise, but the irony is
that for all of its edginess “Better Luck Tomorrow”
plays to the middle ground. It’s an easy film to love just
for what it stands for as a breakout film in the Asian American
community but disregarding the hype, it’s similarly easy to
criticize for its own intangible characters and lack of substantial
focus.

Where Scorsese made you simultaneously love and hate his
gangsters, Lin embraces the ambivalence of his sloppily-scripted
freaks and expects you to take their lack of resolve as
thought-provoking pathos. But by the time the climactic scene
finally arrives the viewer isn’t sure what to feel, and that
isn’t so much inviting as it is disappointing.

The result is an entertaining film, but one that falls short of
making a heartfelt commentary on a culture Lin seems to understand
so well. “Better Luck Tomorrow” only accentuates a
generation’s desperate need for voice, perhaps hinting that
Lin’s best is yet to come.

-Andrew Lee