‘Bad Genius’ is a Conscientious Eat-the-Rich Heist Movie with Moral Integrity
A perhaps unnecessary but still satisfying remake of the Thai smash hit
There’s a moral lesson in J.C. Lee’s Bad Genius (the 2024 American remake of the celebrated 2017 Thai original) that could be interpreted in multiple ways. The most prevalent one is that as an immigrant in America, or in any country, you have two options to make it. (1), You can work yourself to death, and sacrifice your own health and dreams in order to provide for you and your family. (2), You can hustle, use your smarts to take advantage of others, and exploit wealth and capitalism for your benefit.
As a heist movie, Bad Genius focuses mostly on the latter for obvious reasons but also makes an interesting case for how the lines between right and wrong blur when you have the gift of a super brain.
Lynn (Callina Liang) is an academic high school prodigy. She’s top of her class, a state crossword puzzle champion, and a math genius. All of this is emphasized by her working-class father (Benedict Wong) when he talks to a prestigious private school’s principal early on. Lynn is well aware that they can't afford tuition. But to their surprise, the principal lady offers them a scholarship that she happily accepts. The first sign of trouble arrives in the form of a rich White girl (doesn’t it always?) called Grace (Taylor Hickson), who needs help crossing her exams. And by help I mean someone she can use to cheat.
At first, Lynn feels hesitant about the idea but eventually gives in. It’s not the worst way to make friends at a new school, not to mention getting in the good graces of Grace and her clique. Lynn just wants to belong — plus the adrenaline rush she gets a taste of is also exciting (many of us, including me, know that feeling better than we’d like to admit). From then on, things escalate quickly once Grace introduces Lynn to her well-to-do jock boyfriend Pat (Samuel Braun), who immediately sees an opportunity there. His social circle is full of wealthy students who'd pay some serious cash to pass exams easily. Lynn buys into the idea and develops a system of hand signals (based on her excellent piano knowledge) with which she can communicate the right answers during tests.
It’s a success, so her “clientele” grows as much as her popularity. But we know, since the movie tells us early on, it’s only a matter of time until she gets caught. When she does, it leaves her with two choices: go back to being a good girl or refine the cheating scheme and confront the snitch who turned her in.
Despite its relatively low stakes, Bad Genius is pretty clever about delivering its thrills. Like any good heist movie, it offers a fascinating and detailed deconstruction of its central scheme and how Lynn and her accomplices bring it to fruition through hard work and practice. Think of the usual fast-paced montages and sharp edits, mandatory plot twists (betrayals!), and intense interrogation scenes. They are all here, functioning as well as they’re supposed to while the emotional beats of the script make sure you also care about the main characters and invest in what happens to them throughout.
Where Bad Genius eventually falters and loses some of its credibility is the final and biggest stunt Lynn and Co. attempt to pull off with mixed results. On the one hand, it’s an impressive and highly elaborate third act, real edge-of-your-seat stuff, that we see them plan, execute, and improvise upon when things go wrong (and they do, catastrophically). On the other, it makes you wonder if these kids had put the same level of effort into studying as they did into cheating, they might as well just passed the test naturally. Then, of course, there would be no film to watch.
But what works, regardless of whether or not you turn on the suspension-of-disbelief button in your head, is the movie’s portrayal of class differences, wealth and poverty, and the moral conclusions it leaves you with. In the end, the corruption of power, affluence, and those who wield it will still look as ugly and sickening as it always does because that's how the world and society function. The rich exploit the poor because they can. But sometimes the poor deftly outmaneuver and defeat the rich without losing their moral integrity and freedom. And that will always make for a satisfying watch.
Bad Genius premieres in the U.S. on October 11th and will be available to stream on Paramount+ and Mubi from October 17th.
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