It's hard to believe that anyone watching "Better Days" would miss that the story was clearly critical (condemnatory) of the toxic culture around the education system. A system that suggests that you're weak for failing, and that it's all about not failing your parents. Not that it's own approach to learning has severely damaged its youth and their ability to empathize with their fellow peers.

At least, that's how I interpreted the suicide (of Hu Xiao Die) that's the catalyst for the film. So the hard swerve into hyper-focusing on school bullying alone, and attributing the death solely to that (while there are giant signs condemning children for not being perfect in school, contrasted against security gates lining the school balcony) was tone deaf to me. "We just gon' pretend that the school system wasn't also responsible for this?"

Reading up the film (Hollywood Reporter) certainly clarified things for me. Chen Nian's story lost a lot of context with the removal of most of her mother's subplot, which seemed to tie her directly to way Liu Bei Shan made a living in the absence of his mother.

Still, even with all this knowledge at the forefront of my mind, I don't think the film in its present form is terrible (hoping a fool's hope that an uncut version surfaces at some point). Even if the film never condemns the education, or the parents, or the financial straits that lands Chen's mother in a bad place, their actions are a damning document on how it harms the children (who act out that trauma on their peers, driving them to death, until it's eventually visited upon them).

But I suppose that kind of messaging only works if the audience intended actually sees it for what it is (and from what I read about it, that flew over everyone's heads).

If the film falls off the rails, it's when it becomes about the sudden murder of the comically cruel school bully (Wei Lai) and how the two characters deal with it. As something buffered against the hyper nationalistic "we shall prevail" exam scene, it comes out of nowhere. When did this happen? Why was this considered important enough to dwell on, but not important to actually see happen on-screen?

We don't get explanation until the last hour of the film (it was an accident spurred on by rage, and the Wei Lai's inability to leave Chen alone). The structure, for lack of a better word, throws the pacing of the film off completely because it's looking to surprise the audience with a brief whodunit. This is something we should've seen in real time (chronological order). The rest of the film is a melodramatic drag race to the conclusion of the film that sees both characters arrested (like some moralistic twist straight outta the hayes code).

What holds the film up, for the most part, are the performances of the leads (Zhou Dong Yu and Jackson Yi), and the development of their kinship. I believed these two strangers would form a rocky friendship as a means of coping their toxic environments. But for a film that's two hours and some change, I don't feel like more attention was given to their dynamic.

However strong Yu and Yi's chemistry is, Chen and Bai's relationship feels rushed. A lot of the film was really hyper-focused on how Chen was terrorized by her peers, almost gratuitously. And if they wanted me to empathize with Wei Lai, why was more time not afforded to her side of the narrative instead of dumped at the end of the film?

I wish that the director (Derek Tsang) never pursued a release in mainland China, because its sounds likes the guy's work was put through the ringer of a completely avoidable situation.