Better Luck Tomorrow

This intriguing but dramatically thin film about suburban honor students who tap into a pipeline of crime, amorality and abused privilege begins as two teens find a dead body under highly surprising circumstances. The story then leaps back four months to trace the double lives of several academically advanced Asian-Americans who build a scam and crime network along with their impressive college entrance résumés and portfolios. These ultra-competitive youth are bored to tears in a culture that celebrates lawlessness and a parental climate that allows good grades to substitute for passports to freedom and lawlessness. The narrator is an all-American prototype swallowed up by a high-school clique that adopts a gang mentality. The cast includes Parry Shen, Jason Tobin, Sung Kang, Roger Fan, John Cho and Karin Anna Cheung. The movie was produced, co-written, edited and directed by Justin Lin.