I just saw this movie and after leaving the theatre, I definitely felt like the movie was worth seeing, but it took me a while of thinking to figure exactly how I felt about the movie. Finally I came to the conclusion that the movie was indeed one I liked, although I don’t really like the whole “teenager gone bad” story. Regardless though, the plot was done well, the characters, while somewhat one-dimensional, acted their roles well.
I think one interesting thing about it that I couldn’t put my finger on immediately was the fact that you never saw the kids’ parents. For me this is indicative of the language + generation gap a lot of Asian-American kids feel with their parents. These kids, so long as they maintained some good grades, were able to whatever they wanted.
I realize I’m not going terribly in-depth on anything, but I kinda want to see what others thought of this movie. So…, have many of you seen this movie yet? Did you like it? Did you feel it was really groundbreaking in any sense? How do you feel about the idea that it broke Asian stereotypes?
Is it still in theaters?
It was a pretty good flick, i think too much was focused on the Asian aspect, it was a universal plot that would work for any group of people, and that probably turned people off at the box office. I did think it was an amazing film accomplished by essentially the director’s credit cards. I could never create something that good as a freshman offering on a shoestring budget. It didn’t look like it had no budget. MTV did give him some money, but the movie was essentially finished by then.
As for the Asian stereotypes thing, it was impressive to see a film get released from a major studio with asians in all the lead roles, hopefully it will help lead to more roles for asian actors, they are undershown (although a part of that is ther just aren’t many asian actors).
It just came out on DVD. I saw it in the theaters and loved it - it’s one of the few movies about teenagers I’ve seen that has any relevance to the experiences I had back in high school. It’s quite rare that I see a movie and knew all the people in it back then. Matt Katz, you know who you are.
I thought it was fantastic to see a movie full of Asian people that in no way had to be about Asian people at all and could have worked just fine with a mainstream white cast. It was well done, well acted, believable. I dug it.
Saw it in the theater, didn’t like it at all. I thought it was really unrealistic and superficial. (From my own experience; was in high school from 94-98)
Unrealistic, possibly. Superficial? Not sure why you would say that… Although, the fact you say it’s unrealistic is amusing, considering it has happened before. The murder itself is inspired from all sorts of similar stuff that’s happened in the past decade, most notably the Stuart Tay murder in 1999. The idea of straight ‘A’ kids dealing drugs and various other illicit things happened with a kid named Marvin Mercado I believe. So, unrealistic as you may think it is, it has actually happened.
After looking up what I just wrote, I’m not entirely sure about the name Marvin Mercado. I do know there has been at least one somewhat publicized instance of an extremely good student who was involved with gangs and various illegal ‘things’, I just can’t find it right now -_-;.