Heist movies sometimes evoke drama round vaults, jewels, and casinos with high-speed automotive chases that standard-setting classics like Ocean’s Eleven and The Italian Job usually incorporate for the high-stakes rigidity that the style takes pleasure in. A classroom and an examination corridor do not encourage confidence because the backdrop for such heart-pounding suspense. However Unhealthy Genius (2017), a Thai crime thriller helmed by Nattawut Poonpiriya, reimagines tutorial dishonest as an adrenaline-fueled heist journey.

Impressed by real-life information stories of an SAT dishonest scandal in Asia, the movie grew to become certainly one of Thailand’s most profitable motion pictures and spawned varied variations, together with a TV collection, a well-received 2024 American remake starring Benedict Wong, and a novelization. Unhealthy Genius acquired a common nod of approval from movie fans, incomes a deserved 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

‘Unhealthy Genius’ Is a Uncommon Heist Film With Exams on the Middle of the Motion

Unhealthy Genius tells the story of Lynn (Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying), a lower-middle-class, ingenious teenage pupil who jumps on a chance to plan an elaborate international examination dishonest scheme to make tens of millions. Poonpiriya’s movie begins with the geeky Lynn and her father (Thaneth Warakulnukroh) within the workplace of a college principal. They’re exploring choices to have Lynn admitted to the well-to-do college that might allow her to safe scholarships to review overseas. Sadly, the varsity’s tuition payment is revealed to be method above her father’s monetary skills, however fortunately, Lynn is obtainable a scholarship. She shortly befriends the kind-hearted and eager-to-please Grace (Eisaya Hosuwan), who introduces her to Pat (Teeradon Supapunpinyo), her rich boyfriend. A friendship turns into a enterprise, with Grace and Pat paying Lynn to permit them to repeat her solutions throughout exams and finally scaling as much as admit extra wealthy college students into Lynn’s “piano courses” — so known as as a result of she makes use of classical music concerto notes as her examination room code language along with her purchasers.

Lynn’s dishonest on the college stage is busted after Financial institution (Chanon Santinatornkul), Lynn’s equally proficient competitor additionally on scholarship, stories his suspicions to the principal, inflicting Lynn to lose her scholarship. Grace and Pat have to go a world examination to review in Boston. Determined, they flip to Lynn, who devises a intelligent scheme utilizing time zones to entry and leak examination solutions globally. Satisfying the adage that everybody has a worth, Lynn recruits the morally upright Financial institution to their scheme, hammering residence the pragmatism of the realities of their world, the place integrity takes a again seat. For Lynn and her accomplices, failure would imply monetary and reputational wreck, and presumably jail time.

Past the thrills of a fraudulent syndicate, the movie gives social commentary about ethical dilemmas, class disparities, and the place of teachers in life’s success, whereas commenting on the darkish facet of schooling. As soon as considered a social equalizer, the movie means that schooling has change into a corrupt enterprise that prioritizes income. The movie touches on different coming-of-age points, comparable to single-parenting youngsters. What actually units the movie aside is the way it effortlessly turns one of the boring and least-liked college actions right into a gripping cinematic expertise. Poonpiriya’s path makes use of motivated digicam actions with fast precision photographs that replicate the mounting strain on the shoulders of the movie’s characters. Whether or not it’s a close-up of Lynn’s snapping fingers as she performs an conceivable piano for her “purchasers” to discern solutions or a sweeping shot that reveals how heavy her duty is beneath surveillance, Unhealthy Genius delivers sequences which are as intense as you’ll find in any prime motion blockbuster.

‘Unhealthy Genius’ Exposes Coming-of-Age Class Disparities and the Darkish Facet of Tutorial Success

Poonpiriya’s thriller explores societal buildings, notably class inequality. What motivates Lynn will not be greed however frustration that stems from a system that exploits her brilliance. Regardless of being provided a scholarship to assist keep and lift the varsity’s standing, she realizes that the varsity remains to be extorting cash from her determined and comparatively poor schoolteacher father. She discerns that cash guidelines the world and justifies her choice to cheat in exams along with her want to reduce her father’s monetary burden and the invention that academics, too, are pushed by cash after she finds out that some leak exams to wealthy youngsters who pay them for remedial courses. The movie delivers its social commentary with a pointy and entertaining edge that hammers its message with out sounding preachy, save for its ending that considerably seems to unnecessarily try to attain ethical factors.

Lynn and her accomplices’ struggles spotlight how everybody performs a singular position on life’s grand stage. Unhealthy Genius is a uncommon gem that not solely retains viewers on the sting of their seats but in addition forces them to confront uncomfortable truths in regards to the methods they stay in.

Unhealthy Genius is at the moment accessible to stream on Netflix within the U.S.

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