Lin's movie tries to do too much--it takes some dark, credibility-defying turns--but you come away knowing you've witnessed the birth of a moviemaking career.

Better Luck Tomorrow, a corrosive, insightful study of the pressure-packed lives of suburban high school students, brings a new variant to gangster movies: gangsters with perfect SAT scores.

Better Luck Tomorrow breathes new life into a familiar story: coming of age in high school.

Perceptive at dramatizing moments where teenagers' performances of masculinity and maturity inadvertently melt into something more fraught and real.