For Episode 3 of our season on troublemakers, we quickly review the history of Asian American male gangster films, before focusing on a pair of Byron Q-directed films that made us think of gangster films in a whole new way.

Bang Bang is a coming-of-age film starring Thai Ngo and David Huynh that is unique because the cast is made up of a combination of actors and gangsters and it also addresses the class differences between teenagers that are drawn to gang life for different reasons. Raskal Love is a documentary that tells the story of Vanna Fut, one of the actors in Bang Bang who became a member of the Tiny Raskal Gang at a young age after his family came to Pomona, CA after escaping the Killing Fields.

As we compare real-life Asian American gangster stories to silver screen ones, we rethink the idea of what a troublemaker is. Also, we realize that we were both in attendance for a climactic scene of Raskal Love and had no idea what we were witnessing at the time.