Feb. 4- I’ve had this post in my drafts for a while now because I really don’t like how I’ve written it. However in the spirit of re-analyzing and reviewing, here is what I have to add.

Love triangle? Stupid. Better luck tomorrow? For who? No one, they’ve potentially ruined their lives. Since the film plays off of stereotypes, rather than a specific race, the characters are presented as a “default” pan-Asian. Possibly one of the best things is checking out the IMBD page for this film and seeing everybody theorize that this Han is the same Han (both actor and character) from the Fast and the Furious and trying to place this film within the chronology.

Understandably, as a film about breaking stereotypes the characters would be played in extremes. But why did they go this far? Why did they turn to drugs, violence, and partying? Scamming is one thing, but prostitutes and cocaine is a totally different one. The film is loosely based off of the Stuart Tay murder.

Jan. 16- I thought the film was very strange and disturbing. I never imagined that the dead body from the beginning to be the victim of the main group. I liked the use of text on the screen paired with the situation of the character of Ben.

Ben is portrayed as fairly plain. He doesn’t have the same sort of presence the other characters do.  He seemed to have the strongest morals of the group, but he is the one that beat Steve to death. He eliminated his opposition in the love triangle.

The character of Virgil was too wild. He seemed too highly excitable and easily angered. His behavior seemed unintelligent, but he is portrayed as a highly intelligent individual. From the start of the film he didn’t seem too bad, a bit of a pervert, but nothing particularly harmful to society. By the time that the group started gaining notoriety, you could see him becoming too drawn into the greed and power. The scene where the group had beaten up the jock at the party and were driving away, Virgil showed such a big change. Going from pumped and excited to scared and crying.

Han doesn’t reveal much of himself in the film. Mainly he is a bit violent towards his cousin Virgil, but he didn’t join in the beating of the jock at the party. In fact, he is the one that pulls Virgil away from the violence.

Deric is originally shown to be the model student, president of every club and the boy who can do no wrong. So when he is the one to bull Ben into the cheat sheet scam, Ben is really surprised. He is initially the most willing to set aside the illegal activities when Ben decided he has had enough. He is also the one who takes charge and ends Steve’s life after he’s been beaten. After this event, he becomes the loose cannon of the group, wanting to tie up all the loose ends in order to protect his future.

Better Luck Tomorrow

“You happy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fuck, man. That’s the most truthful thing I’ve ever heard.”

I knew from the start that this movie was going to be a little different, but I didn’t realize quite how drastically until Steve and Ben actually started to become friends. After they talked at the baseball range, I felt there was an odd, genuine sort of bond between them. The kind of bond that you form when you don’t particularly like someone, one way or the other, but you are more or less capable of understanding them regardless of that fact. Even now, given the ending, I’m not certain that initial judgment was necessarily wrong.

My attention to detail isn’t very good at times. I spent the better part of the movie idly wondering, “why are they so desperate to find a pager?” and then, without ever actually turning away from that train of thought, “which of these characters is going to die?” I went over scenes in my head as they flashed across the screen, picking out which characters had a white shirt on, which ones seemed to be in the most danger. I remained under the mistaken assumption that when someone did die it was either going to be Virgil, or it would be Virgil’s fault, somehow. Lacking somewhat in the common sense department, I expected his mistakes to be the worst. In many ways, they were. He tossed guns around, he pulled one on a young woman, and in the end,  I’m fairly certain the gun that fell to the ground was his own. He became so obsessed with his escapism that it inevitably caused his downfall, even if it wasn’t because of a conscious decision on his part. We see him spend the majority of the movie trying to be anyone but himself. He beats the hell out of a boy because he can, and later laughs and weeps, as if he can’t decide why he did it. His cousin is abusive, and takes every opportunity to beat him whenever he can. After they think it’s done, after the body is buried and he and Ben are lying in the son, he says he can’t wait to get away, get out of the hellhole he’s in. And then as the movie begins to draw to a close, when he can no longer escape, he decides to do what many people choose in the end, with that very same gun.

Largely the movie felt to me that it was about people trying to escape from what they were in, and in some cases, from themselves. When Steve actually voiced these concerns (in his own, perhaps misguided way), the people around him lashed out at it because it was to some extent a reflection of themselves.