If you are looking for a film to entertain you on your day-off, then this one isn't it.
Better Days destroyed me completely. It has been months since I watched it, and I haven't been able to talk to anyone about it at all.
To be frank, I started watching it expecting a social drama about bullying and a bit of romance. What I got was a story that cracked me wide open, wrung me out, and left me crying for days after. This is a movie that doesn’t just tell a story, it changes the way you look at people.
The story follows Chen Nian (Zhou Dongyu), a high school girl crushed under the weight of absentee parents, and the rigorous exam system. Things only get worse when she finds herself the target of the school bully. One day she crosses paths with Xiao Bei (Jackson Yee), a small-time street thug with more scars than swagger. When she sees him getting beat up, she tries calling the police to help, instead gets caught by the thugs. One thing leads to other, and Chen Nian ends up asking Xiao Bei for protection from bullies outside school. Together, they form a fragile alliance, not quite romance, not quite survival pact; but something raw and real that makes your chest ache.
The performances are so good that you believe in the characters and forget that these are just actors playing a role. Zhou Dongyu's performance gives Chen Nian's character a quiet sort of strength that makes you want to shield her from the world and cheer her defiance in the same breath. Jackson Yee, in his first major film role, is shockingly good. He is a small-time street thug, trying to survive on his own and at times we forget how young Xiao Bei is. Behind the rough edges, there’s a vulnerability that makes his bond with Chen Nian extremely tender. Their chemistry isn’t romanticized; it is survival, intimacy forged in fire.
What makes Better Days extraordinary is how it threads tenderness through brutality. The bullying scenes are unbearable. I wanted to skip them, yet sat through them anyway. They are filmed with an unflinching honesty that puts the spotlight on not just cruel classmates but the entire system that lets cruelty fester. And in the middle of all that pain, the film dares to show us love. Pure love. Love as defiance, love as shelter, love as a reminder that even in rubble, something fragile and beautiful can grow.
Cinematically, it is a world of muted grays and dirty streets, a realism that mirrors the suffocating weight on its characters. But it’s in that bleak palette that the smallest gestures - a glance, a touch, and a shared silence shine through like stolen sunlight.
Better Days isn’t an easy watch. It’s brutal, it’s devastating, and it will leave you gutted. But it is also a movie that everyone MUST WATCH. This is a story about youth, cruelty, and survival that refuses to be sanitized, even under censorship pressures. It’s the kind of film that makes you cry not just for the characters but for every young person who has been failed by the world meant to protect them.
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