(There are Spoilers) Getting the highest entrance scores in the collages history young but very naive Beijing physics grad Liu Xing, Ye Ling, was given the honor to work with the great American cosmologist professor Jacob Reiser, Aidan Quinn, as his #1 assistant. Being very impressed in the work, in both physics and cosmology, he did back in China Prof. Reiser wants Liu to help him with his work in proving the "Reiser String Theory". It's the "String Theory" that, in Reiser's mind, ties together the entire far flung universe into a neat compact and single ball of cosmic wax.

Liu who at first worshiped the ground that the "Great Man"-Professor Reiser- walked on soon came to conclusions that were totally opposite to his "String Theory". This made made the at first friendly and lovable professor a bit ticked off in his #1 assistant Liu making him look foolish by being totally off the mark in how strings keep the universe from drifting apart! What Liu theorized and later proved on paper, with higher mathematics, is that there's in fact undetected but massive amounts of "Dark Matter", instead of strings, that keeps the universe uniformed-in the even distances of its stars nd galaxies from each other-and in tact! By this very simple formula that he was to base his doctoral dissertation on Liu totally destroyed Professor Reiser's flimsy and badly thought out "String Theory". With the professor putting Liu's theory down as just wishful thinking he later had it, behind Prof. Reiser's back, published in a prestigious science magazine that had Reiser-in making his "String Theory" look totally ridicules-really lose it!

Feeling that Liu isn't a "team Player" Prof. Reiser used all his power-as the "Great Man" of science that he is- and influence to destroy Liu career as not only a future Nobel Prize winner but even flunking him and preventing Liu from advancing in the world of science and becoming a physics professor. Liu for his part was totally shocked in his boss-Prof. Reiser-actions since he always thought that the pursuit of knowledge-or science- was above petty politics! Ending up as a delivery boy, selling perfume and body lotion, Liu in finding out that his fellow Chinese grad student Laurence Feng, Llyod Suh, has been picked by Prof. Reiser as the collage's BSY-Best Student of the Year-his brilliant mind completely short-circuited!

In Liu's mind not only was Feng a butt-kissing, in how he always sucked up to Prof. Reiser, creep but that he also dishonored his Chinese culture and forefathers by becoming too Americanized. This act of betrayal to his race was by Feng changing his given Chinese name of Zhang to Laurence, or "Larry", in order to get the very coveted Best Student of the Year Award. What was even worse is that Liu felt, and rightfully so, that he was a far better student then Larry ever was! It was there and then that Liu made up his mind to not only make Larry but Prof. Reiser and all those-the collage faculty-who conspired to destroyed his future in the world of science pay for what they did to him and pay big time!

The movie "Dark Matter", which is based on a true story, was to be released around the time of the April 16, 2007 "Virginia Tech Massacre". It was then that a 23 year-old South Korean exchange student Seung-Hui Cho, much like Liu Xing in the movie, went nuts and gunned down some 30 people. The movie was put on the shelf and released only on DVD some two years later when the "Virginia Tech Massacre" was no longer front page news.

I watched this with several friends and it was interesting to see who was surprised by the ending and who wasn't. Let there be no doubt, there is a great subject for a plot here. Forget that its based on a true story because its not - that's just marketing and fodder for pointless forum discussions.

What really hurt this movie were the pointless special effects and overly exaggerated sentimental shots, mostly featuring Meryl Streep, interspersed throughout the movie - typically after a scene where the protagonist experiences success or failure. There are only a handful of these shots and they only last seconds – but they are schmaltzy in an otherwise very believable movie. If you're watching even somewhat closely, they give away the movie very quickly.

I'll bet Shi-Zheng Chen goes on eventually to make a truly great movie. This one is about half way there.

Dark Matter is a neat little film about the promise and peril of being a Chinese graduate student at an American university. It gives you a peek inside the subculture of young Asians imported into the country in virtual indentured servitude to the careers and egos of middle-aged academics.

Liu Xing (Liu Ye) is a brilliant math student who's come to the U.S. to study with renowned cosmology professor Jake Reiser (Aidan Quinn). He immediately put Xing to work and is impressed with the results, as long as they conform to Reiser's existing theories on the structure of the universe. Xing winds up living with two other Chinese graduate students, Little Square (Li Bo) and Old Wu (He Yu), and becomes friends with Joanna Silver (Meryl Streep), a rich man's wife who's fascinated with China and has become a patron of the constant stream of Chinese graduate students flowing into Professor Reiser's lab. Xing even develops a crush on a pretty townie (Taylor Schilling) who runs the local tea shop. He writes letters back to China telling his parents of how wonderful things are for him in America.

But then things stop being so wonderful. Xing's academic career is stalled when his theories on so-called "dark matter" conflict with Professor Reiser's ideas and a much more Americanized student with the Americanized name of Laurence Feng replaces him on the fast track for a PhD. His townie girl crush tells Xing she just wants to be friends and he eventually ends up selling cosmetics door-to-door. But Xing's letters home remain and bright and cheerful as ever, covering up a black depression that explodes in a moment of violent insanity.

Sadly reminiscent of a tragedy at the University of Iowa nearly 20 years ago, Dark Matter gently engages you in considering a cultural and economic phenomenon that's been around for so long, it's become a cliché. Asian graduate students in the sciences are so numerous, they've become a punch line on shows like Futurama. This film helps you to think of them as real people, the kind of people who want to make money, become Americans, go home or even win a Nobel Prize. It helps you to imagine what it's like to be stranded in a strange land, surrounded by your countrymen but still very much alone.

The acting is also pretty good, though it's odd to see a Meryl Streep movie where she doesn't give the best performance. She's fine, but Joanna Silver's a fairly minor character who contributes more to the atmosphere of the film than she does to the plot. No, the standout actor here is definitely Aidan Quinn. Reiser is the linchpin on which Liu Zing's life turns and Quinn does an excellent job at showing how vanity and envy can dominate the minds of even the smartest men. Liu Ye and Lloyd Suh also draw such a wonderful contrast between the frustrated integrity of Liu Xing that eventually turns in on itself and the vacuous ambition of Laurence Feng that leads to reward, as it so often does in this unfortunate world.

There are a lot of little things to enjoy in Dark Matter. From Reiser's feisty secretary Hildy (Blair Brown) to Xing's interactions with his roommates to Bill Irwin playing Hal Silver, the rich man who tries to tolerate his wife's involvement with the Chinese students. The only quibble I could have with it is that the movie does move very quickly from the beginning to the end of Xing's emotional implosion and it feels like there's about 10 or so minutes of the film that have been left out. A lot of the dialog is also in Chinese with subtitles, so you do have to accept that.

All in all, though, I quite liked Dark Matter. It's a good little movie that deserves a gander.