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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Better Luck Tomorrow (2003)

Rating: 3 Stars (out of 4)

New School

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Better Luck Tomorrow on DVD

Better Luck Tomorrow starts with a bang, kicking off with the screenwriter's trick of showing us a chunk from the middle. Two Asian-American high-schoolers relax in the L.A. sun when someone's pager starts beeping. "It's not me," says one, then the other. They begin digging in the nearby dirt and find that the pager belongs, in fact, to a buried corpse.

Directed by Justin Lin, the film plays with the enormous and ever-mounting pressure and competition among high-school students. Smart kids Ben (Parry Shen) and Virgil (Jason J. Tobin) fall into a cheating ring, then find themselves elevated to drug dealers, party guys, and all around playas. Shen and Tobin are particularly good as the straight-laced, handsome Ben and the half-mad Virgil. Lin deals with the harsh material as unblinking black comedy, and some are bound to be offended.

Starring: Parry Shen, Jason J. Tobin, Shirley Anderson, Nanette Matoba, Kenji Matoba, Sung Kang, Roger Fan
Written by: Ernesto Foronda, Justin Lin, Fabian Marquez
Directed by: Justin Lin
MPAA Rating: R for violence, drug use, language and sexuality
Running Time: 99 minutes
Date: April 11, 2003