It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

This story is a very true character study that I can attest to of the freedom that everyone grants you when you maintain a scholarly and overachieving front, maybe not as to the extremes of the murder as shown in this movie but still very real. This shows the lesser characterized side of intellect, how you use it when your bored and you realize you can outsmart everyone around you and expand into drugs, scams, etc. Operate with impunity and because your keeping grades and appearances up no one suspects a thing. I'm not saying its true for everyone but this movie is a very real look when your bored, stuck in suburbia , and decide to make the rash jump into more "interesting" pursuits and figure your smart enough to get away with.The film itself never leaves you bored even though its not flashy. The characters themselves are very believable and conceited in their own greatness. The story is well paced and shows the gradual progression into the dark underbelly when temptations meet brains that think they are beyond limitation. And despite what others try to slap on as a detractor to this film, race really doesn't have anything to do with it, its just the group of kids portrayed in the film. Their grades, immorality and decisions they make have nothing to do with race

The biggest flaw with this film is that all the main actors are ridiculously too old, all anywhere from 10-13 years older than their characters are supposed to be, which was hard not to think about while watching the film, and it made all of them not very believable.Another flaw was how NONE of the parents of any of the main characters were depicted whatsoever which caused the film to be very strongly lacking of a human element. This, though a considerable detriment, was not extremely significant.What hurt the plot line the most, was how they were able to pull a gun on one of the popular kids at a private residence in front of dozens of people and NO ONE called the cops on them. All it would have taken was one of the witnesses to call the cops, and they would have 12 witnesses standing against them in court along with depicted injuries of the person who they severely beat, and in an instant they would be off to juvi, all of their suburban study oriented dreams shattered, but instead, they were able to somehow use this incident to gain notoriety, and begin a whole sting of criminal schemes.The worst thing about this is how they were suddenly able to become serious drug dealers as a result of one, in normal cases, extremely stupid prank. This made no sense, and wasn't explained whatsoever. It's not impossible, but the fact that it wasn't explained and the main character says "oh and then switching to drug dealing was the obvious next move." proves that the writer had no idea what he was doing and no idea where to begin filling in this plot hole. Why would a drug supplier share his supply with 4 punk teenagers without instead moving into the territory with his own faction. Basically if they DID become drug dealers in this way, they would have become someones subordinate and have to answer to them, whereas in the movie, no drug supplier at all was spoken of or depicted, and they apparently answered to no one.In the end it's a poorly conceived plot line with average to trite writing and stagy clichéd plot setups. This film really does not have much original to offer, but for the undiscriminating viewer who enjoys crime dramas, it's not without entertainment value. It's sad to say that the only original thing in this movie that I've never seen before is an all Asian cast in an English speaking film.

I was genuinely surprised by the director's savvy: BETTER LUCK TOMORROW is about as impressive as it gets. Not to take anything away from the players (who, to a man, are excellent), but the cinemaskill here is top of the line. At no point in the proceedings did I opt to nod off or to check my watch or hit pause and go stretch my legs: I was too caught up in what was going on on screen. I'm sure it could be argued that the ending was telegraphed (especially when one takes into account the opening scene), but it seemed, somehow, to catch me completely by surprise. My favorite line comes when someone observes that "all of the Asian kids" are at the pivotal party. "The library was closed," one of the leads responds. Superb job all around.

So for the most part I really liked this movie. I thought it showed great potential from the director and cast. Strange that after three years most of them have been in limbo career- wise. However, my comments lay more in the major turning point of the film rather than the whereabouts of the filmmakers. The one problem I had with the story is when Ben kills Steve. How the hell do you set up a character that you're supposed to have sympathy for and then have him do something as horrific as that. Especially in the brutal manner in which it was done. And for what! A girl...that he kinda liked...and that kinda liked him...and maybe they kissed. Maybe I'm missing something, but after that I could care less about what happened to Ben. I wanted to care more, but what the hell, now I can't see him as a likable guy anymore. You can't root for someone you don't like at least on some level. Other then that I liked what I saw. There's a lot of budding talent here: Sung Kang, Jason Tobin, and John Cho are among the ones that stood out for me personally, and overall I really liked the way Justin Lin pulled off the film.