Better Days · reception & legacy
2019 · Derek Tsang Kwok-Cheung
How Better Days has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Its road to screens was chaos — yanked from Berlin days before its 2019 premiere, then surprise-dropped in China with barely any notice — but it exploded into a $230M+ hit, and a Best International Feature Oscar nomination for Hong Kong in 2021 sealed its climb from censorship casualty to modern classic.
What's debated
The unresolvable fan debate: can you fully love it knowing the source novel was widely accused of lifting from Keigo Higashino — great film, tainted DNA?
Its footprint
"You protect the world, I'll protect you" became the film's calling card across Chinese social media, and the matching-buzzcuts image of Zhou Dongyu and Jackson Yee is its endlessly reposted visual shorthand.
Where it stands
A Letterboxd favourite of the East Asian cinema crowd — routinely name-dropped as one of the great Chinese-language films of its era and the proof-of-serious-actor moment for Jackson Yee.