Discussion & Critical Review of Better Luck Tomorrow

The movie better luck tomorrow has been picturized on Asian Americans. The main motto of the film is to focus on the lives of Asian American how they survive and how they were entre to the world of crime. The movie is based on the lives of teenagers in south California and the movies was made by Justin. Ben plays leading role and they were work on the perspective of stereotypes and the goal of Ben and his friends want to achieve the acceptance in the university as well as in the society where they live.

On the platform of Indiewire, Erica Abeel explains that Justin Lin has effectively portrayed American Asians as amoral and when the movie was first screened, it raised a lot of questions among the public and viewers. In this movie, American Asians have been represented as gangsters. However, Erica also explains that Justin didn’t have the objective of portraying a minority as bad but represent the decisions which we generally need to make in our everyday life and how such decisions can lead to more decisions. We don’t know when and how these decisions might take us on a wrong and bad path (Abeel, 2003).

            Justin Lin effectively subverts the dualistic stereotypes of Asian Americans because they are portrayed as gangsters and indulged in crime in his movie. Actually, Asian Americans have the status of model minorities and it has been undermined by Justin Lin in his film. It is, however, important to understand that the intention of Justin Lin hasn’t been to portray Asian Americans as villains or bad people but to indicate that they also face decisions and take some decisions which can lead them to a negative and wrong direction. Meanwhile, the absence of parents throughout the movie indicates that characters in the movie didn’t have the people that could guide them to the right direction. If there had been parents in the movie and characters had still done the wrong deeds then it would have put the American Asians in a poor position in the eyes of audience. Thus, the absence of parents indicates that people can take wrong decisions when there is no one to guide them (Feng, 2017).

References of Critical Review of Better Luck Tomorrow

Abeel, E. (2003). Asian Americans In Three Dimensions: Justin Lin Talks About “Better Luck Tomorrow”. Retrieved from Indiewire: https://www.indiewire.com/2003/04/asian-americans-in-three-dimensions-justin-lin-talks-about-better-luck-tomorrow-79806/

Feng, P. X. (2017). Asian American media studies and the problem of legibility. Cinema Journal 56, 125-130.