There is a common misconception that if a child is doing well in school that he or she must be staying out of trouble. For many kids, this may be true. These are the kids for whom school is a struggle and it takes every ounce of effort for them to stay ahead of the grade curve.

But then there is a subset of the high acheivers. These are the kids that are so smart that the high grades come easy. Sure, they still have to study, but the real work comes in finding a cure for their boredom. And therein lies the danger.

For some of these kids, the pursuit of stimulation can lead down troublesome paths and these kids are creative enough to not get caught.

This is the essense of Better Luck Tomorrow, a wonderfully powerful look at youth culture. The group of kids in this film aren't gangsters or obvious troublemakers. In any other film, they would be the elite of the school -- the academic and athletic all-stars. They are placed into this role here, too, but there is something else more sinister under the surface.

Better Luck Tomorrow opens with Ben and Virgil (Parry Shen and Jason J. Tobin) lounging on a couple of lawn chairs. It might be just another lazy Saturday for these kids. Then a cell phone rings. After verifying that the ringing isn't coming from their own phones, the two look at each other in horror and scramble off the chairs and crawl in the grass, their ears to the ground. They begin to dig with assurance -- they know where to look -- and uncover the dead body and its ringing phone.

The film then jumps to several months earlier and we are immediately put on edge. We know that events will ultimately lead to a death, but we don't know who the victim will be. Is it murder? Or is it an accident? Until the film's final moments, it could go either way.

As the film progresses, it takes some interesting chances. For one thing, the main cast is almost entirely Asian. Many films would have resorted to stereotypes, but not this one. However, even though the story doesn't trap its characters into cliches, the other characters in the film do judge our main group by the color of their skin. For every criminal activity the kids engage in, the kids around them escalate them through rumors until this small group is treated with a level of fear reserved for hard core gangs. It is not the main characters that dub themselves the Chinese Mafia -- that name comes from their classmates.

Another interesting thing about the film is an almost complete lack of adult characters. It further illustrates the misconceptions we tend to place on academic acheivement. The mentality seems to be that as long as the grades are high, the parents just don't need to be involved.

One of the more poignant aspects of the story is that no matter how bad things get (and they get pretty bad), the core group of friends never really seem to intend any malace. Even as events spiral out of their control, there is a feeling that all they really want is stimulation and attention.

By the time the film ends, we've come to care for these misguided youth in ways that their parents don't. Even after they've committed despicable acts, there is still some hope that they will turn their lives around, despite the disheartening assurance that this may not be possible. The film leaves us with more questions than answers. We know that one kid has died and that there will be consequences, but just as the kids in the film, we are left to simply experience the moment and hope that for them, tomorrow will be a luckier day.