nathang82 Sorry folks but there are much better teen angst movies then this tripe. How does the acting gets acclaim? They were all horrible. Maybe it was the duologue which sounded like it was written by an edgy 15 year old. And the style...don't get me started. Pick one director and rip him off well, don't pick from a ton and rip them all off poorly. I counted Scorses, Lynch, Aronofsky, and the horrible Matrix directors.Having heard good things I wanted to like this movie, but come on. This is high school direction with a middle school play script. Bad bad bad movie. Just read Less Than Zero and be done with it. A few laughs was all it was good for.

dilbertsuperman PLOT: It ain't easy havin to represent when you are rollin with your homies in the suburban upper middle class Asian hood yo. A handful of idiots think they are smart by creating their own flavor of Asian gang. This particular gang is about as believable as any other fairy tale you might tell a small child or retarded individual to get them off to sleep.This is classic Hollywood here, nothing believable or groundbreaking or that we haven't seen before better somewhere else. The main notable difference is that all the actors are Asian for the most part and it focuses on the exploits of a thoroughly unbelievable suburban Asian gang.This is an obvious stab at the Asian market with the proper watering down of any ethnic reality to make it accessible to American audiences. You can tell they have their fingers crossed for a crossover hit with this puppy.One of the themes I have issue with is these children voicing that they are so smart- that's repeated a lot throughout the film. Yet the scenes belie a naiveté and a stupidity that is more indicative of the writers of the script defying any logical sense(for the simple reason they have none) than the believable actions of members of a gang that gets top grades and packs heat.What we see here is a fairly common beast in high school- the "smart" kid with a serious mental issue that proves he's actually quite stupid via choosing the role of sociopath and draping it in the illusion of mental superiority. They think the next logical evolutionary step in higher consciousness is to be as evil as possible to achieve your goals. Only stupid people are nice is their message. I find the film unrealistic since a pack of idiots like this would have been caught. They are not smooth at all.There are plenty of edgy Japanese films that involve high school that aren't made by Hollywood dummies and are cool and quite entertaining. This is not one of those movies! Unfortunately, since the titles are usually Japanese and hence easily forgettable, none come to mind right now to mention specifically.

zippy g 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.

lkuok Justin Lin does a great job in displaying Asian Americans in a light that reveals that Asian Americans are no different than your average Caucasian Americans. Although it somewhat reconstructs the model minority image, it deconstructs the image that Asian Americans also participate in similar activities than their Caucasian neighbors would participate in if they had similar social milieus - that is, gang-like activities. I think Lin had something going, and towards the end, the movie lost some of its initial attraction. I think the movie could've stayed in the same direction that it was starting on, that of the SAT cramming and the trouble that they brought as well. Parry Shen does a great job as does John Cho.