ONE of the most talked about Southeast Asian films in 2017 is definitely Nattawut Poonpiriya’s ‘Bad Genius’. It is now the highest-grossing Thai film in Malaysia, China and Hong Kong, earning a global box office total of US$42 million.

I don’t intend to produce a film review here but for those who haven’t watch it, the film is about how high school genius, Lynn (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying), has gone from running a sophisticated exam-cheating syndicate in her school to undertaking a Mission Impossible-esque cheating operation of what appears to be a SAT test analogue (called STIC in the film) in Australia.

Granted, the film isn’t flawless. Some had gripes with the ending. I personally think the pacing has some issues, exacerbated by somewhat overuse of special effects.

Nevertheless, it is still remarkable that the director and his cast of talented young actors were able to turn a seemingly mundane matter – exam-cheating – into a well-crafted heist film with familiar touches from the Thai horror troupe.

But for me, that’s not where the true genius of this film lies. The outstanding thing is that they managed to make a blockbuster that places class at the front and centre of its social critique. Suffice to say, minor spoilers ahead.

The question of blockbusters and class

While one would assume so as social inequality has become a mainstay in public discourse, blockbuster films are notably shy in their depiction of class, although gender and racial injustice are getting featured more these days.

Take the highly popular superhero genre for example. Netflix’s Defenders had a thoughtful conversation about White privilege between Luke Cage and Danny Rand. Christopher Nolan tried to channel Charles Dicken’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ in The Dark Knight Rises, yet themes about liberation and oppression got lost in an overly ambitious and convoluted plot. Spiderman: Homecoming saw a twist in the end where Spiderman’s embracing of his ‘friendly neighbourhood’ credentials banishes the ‘subaltern’ question powerfully raised by Michael Keaton’s character.

But that’s it. Most superhero films don’t even pretend to want to address the issue. In the widely panned Justice League, Bruce Wayne’s ‘I Am Rich’ as a superpower even signals that to be a hero, you must either be superhuman or superrich.

A cursory survey of the best-selling Malaysian films reveals, too, the same aversion towards class.

There is one film about a scion basically getting away with rape, oddly shown not as a moral lesson but a love story. And another which shows the picturesque landscape of Malaysia’s countryside only as nostalgic beauty with no social commentary about how our smaller towns and kampungs are being hollowed out by youth migration.

Captive geniuses

Bad Genius opened with the premise that the protagonist, even if meritoriously intelligent, is always at the mercy of others due to her class position. The only thing that retains her at an elite institution is a scholarship. Her reason being there, in her father’s word, ironically, is for a better chance of obtaining yet another scholarship.

Tragically, she would have to compete with Bank (Chanon Santinatornkul) – another student prodigy who’s in worse economic conditions – for that one overseas scholarship position.

At the beginning, Bank’s uprightness contrasted greatly with Lynn’s sly resourcefulness. Lynn started an exam-cheating syndicate after finding out that despite her full scholarship, the school was still collecting donations from her financially-hamstrung father.

Even greater contrast is the amount of money her classmates of ‘higher’ born are willing to pay just to pass their exams.

Anyway, one thing led to another, Lynn and Bank both lost their candidature to the Singapore scholarship and become partners in a multi-million heist project which would help their clients in Thailand pass the STIC test, at the same time make enough money to send themselves abroad for their studies.

In other words, they had to take their luck into their own hands, because scholarships aren’t enough in a dog-eat-dog world with plenty of uber-smart people. Their peers, by virtue of having rich parents, can get to Boston just by minimally passing a test.

The distance between the furthest Lynn and Bank can go even if they worked hard (Singapore), as compared to their silver-spooned classmate (Boston), is metaphorically and literally speaking, thousands of miles apart.

Genre subversion at its best

‘Bad Genius’ does not give the audience’s moral compass an easy way out. It is not poverty porn where the poor but morally righteous face off with the decadent rich. Nor is it telling a story of ‘no nobility in poverty’ by hard-selling consumerist capitalism, oddly prevalent in films produced in Communist China today.

Both the rich and the poor in the film are morally reprehensible. Unlike heist film flagbearers such the ‘Ocean’ and the ‘Fast and the Furious’ series that tend to portray their protagonists narcissistically, there is no honour among thieves here.

Instead of a classic case of rich exploiting poor, it is a quid pro quo between those who can pay to not play fair and those who are willing to get paid helping them do so. There is no Robin Hood in this. The protagonist is helping rich people who do not deserve to pass in exams, in turn earning her way up the social ladder.

If there is ‘no nobility in poverty’ in the world of ‘Bad Genius’, it’s also because there is nothing fair about being poor for these individuals. They were simply born disadvantaged and must make their own fate, against crippling odds, and tragically, against each other.

Another noteworthy genre subversion is that the protagonist is a girl who does not, like a lot of films and dramas out there, attain social mobility only by marrying the rich guy. If there’s an irony, it’s that she’s leaps and bounds better (and as morally ambiguous) than everyone else, but she’s the one who got left behind.

‘Class’y and entertaining

I am not saying that Malaysians don’t make movies like this. The 2015 breakout, Jagat, is very much a story of crime and gangs told as a case of class entrapment. But such openness is still a rarity. Even the great Yasmin Ahmad touches on class only in whispers and by-lines. Few dare to portray class divide as it is, and not as surmountable love-gap TV dramas are built around.

What is special about this film is that there’s no coyness about the question of class at all. Instead, it shoves these questions in our faces time and again without losing its entertainment value.

Blockbusters shouldn’t have to fight monsters and supervillains all the time. Class inequality can be a good nemesis too. If anything, the director of ‘Bad Genius’ shows us that it can be done.

As the world starts to come to terms with the issue of class, I think filmmakers can be bolder. If tickets out of the rat race most of us were born into are hard to come by, at least movie tickets to see it dramatised on the big screen are easier to get. – February 14, 2018.

* A Forensic Science-Asian Studies hybrid, Nicholas Chan is interested in how authority is shaped, exercised, and more importantly, resisted in Southeast Asia.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.