pylgrym It was my privilege to see this movie at the Plaza Theater in Atlanta on a Saturday afternoon with about 150 Vietnamese: grandparents, parents, and kids obviously "made in the U.S.A." . . it was even a greater privilege to be allowed to sit next to a typical third grader who's command of English is far better than his understanding of the parlance of the Old Country. His folks and grandparents, uncles, etc. were all around us, but allowed the lad to ask me questions during the movie while giving his family leisure to thoroughly enjoy it. I whispered my replies as plainly as I could, given the situation, and as we walked out of the show he wished me well and genuinely thanked me (with a little familial prodding).... My situation is that I am a Vietnam veteran whose reckless, existential behavior in 1971 may well have resulted in a son or daughter, as another reviewer, ''huckfinn'', above.... Amazingly, the LORD saw fit in His grace and mercy to save me in 1973, and off and on I cast about for a way to make peace with that part of my sordid past.... well, after I had been married for almost four years, Dung Tanh Phu came into my life, a blessing from World Vision. "Young", as we called him, born just after I left The Nam, had had no little difficulty arriving to America as one of the Boat people. His aunt, Mui and he were the only ones of his family to escape in 1979. So traumatized was Young that he was a problem child in his first, foster home. When we received him (in the name of Christ), he was tubercular. The wife put him on macrobiotics for six months and amazed the folks at the St. Louis County Health Department. We kept him for three formative years and turned him back over to his aunt in somewhat less than delightful circumstances, but that's a longer story.... I won my war by having such wonderful opportunities given to me for ministry to the wonderful Vietnamese and may yet win another of my wars - if God wills - but three's a story yet to be written... suffice it to say that I dearly loved my experience of this film, and hope to share it with my grown children someday. Blessings!

kevin shi Young Vietnamese Binh thought that he was an orphan. But he was wrong. When he was told that his mother was still alive, he decided to find her. He had a short peaceful life with his mother until an accident broke it. His mother urged him to look for his birth father who lived in USA.Their ship suffered big stormy waves in the midway. Unluckily they were taken to Malaysia refugee camp. With the help from a Chinese girl named Ling, Binh took a ship that was leaving for America. In fact severer tests were waiting for him.As what old saying says, nothing in the world is difficult for one who is set to do it. The movie gave us a good example. Although it is a movie, it is still uplifting.Damien Nguyen's plain performance was the shining point of the movie. He had a good interpretation for the hero. Although Nick Nolte appeared for only about ten minutes, he showed me what a good actor could do.An excellent drama. 8/10

Chris Knipp Hans Petter Moland's "The Beautiful Country" is another in a long line of coming-to-America films. This one is about a Vietnamese man who journeys arduously from Saigon to Texas to find his American father. It's a classic theme, and an important one: but fine themes and noble intentions do not a great movie make. Poorly written and edited, draggy, incomprehensible and lacking in verisimilitude (or flat-out unbelievable) in parts and disjointed, an ordeal to watch, the film -- which has some pretty images and some good acting -- is briefly but memorably saved in the last quarter hour when Nick Nolte comes in as the father and he and his son Binh (Damien Nguyen) play off each other in Texas ranch country like a couple of laconic Cormac McCarthy cowboys. Nolte certainly hasn't lost his touch; and the Vietnamese character has had a tight-lipped, stoical quality all along which now suddenly fits and harmonizes in a few quietly effective scenes. Whether it's worth it to sit through all the rest to get to this short sequence is another question.Binh, the central character, is a Vietnamese half-breed man treated brutally in his own country because, as someone fathered by an American soldier, he's regarded as "less than dust." This is true, we find, even though Binh's father married his mother -- and left her behind for reasons not his own. Each major narrative shift is punched forward by an invented-looking event. When the people Binh lives with in the Vietnamese countryside as the film begins gain another family member he's immediately ejected from the household.Binh goes to Saigon where miraculously, though his mother is a nobody working as a house servant, he quickly finds her. Life for Binh is full of Dickensian grimness with sudden strokes of good or bad fortune, and he has a perpetual hangdog look and a creeping walk with shoulders slumped and face down. There's something wrong with his lip. Everyone keeps saying he's ugly, but he's just ordinary: they either perceive him as ugly because of his Caucasian look, or because it's part of the plot. Binh immediately becomes a punching bag as a servant at the house where his mom works, and an accident makes him look guilty of a crime so serious he must immediately flee. Weepingly, his mother sends him off with her young son by somebody else, to make his way -- to America, with a small bundle of cash she's been saving. The hero ends up with his little half-brother in a Malaysian refugee camp, where he meets a resilient Chinese prostitute and would-be singer, Ling (Ling Bai), and they bond. At her urging he escapes and miraculously they are taken onto a rust-coated vessel full of desperate human cargo, a virtual slave ship, headed for America. The captain is Tim Roth, in a typically interesting, but this time wasted, performance. Things are so mismanaged on the boat that the hapless passengers die off like flies, despite a manager's pledge to lose no one since he'll be paid by the head on arrival. Life on board is a seemingly futile struggle to survive. Amid the craziness and death a fantastic game is played wherein the desperate travelers compete by calling out the names of Americana such as foods, places, or movie stars.Binh remains an implausible mixture of hangdog manner and iron will. For no clear reason Captain Oh (Roth) takes a shine to him -- but tells him he'll be out of place wherever he goes. "I know," Binh says.Finally New York comes into view -- but how the passengers are unloaded is one of many explanations the screenplay avoids providing. Binh works in a Chinatown restaurant in the indentured situation he was promised when he talked his way onto the boat -- till somebody remarks that if he has an American father, he's entitled to US citizenship. This revelation causes him to strike out cross country to seek his dad, who's supposed to be in Houston.Since Binh didn't even know where his mother was in Saigon, how he finds his father working as a ranch hand in an obscure corner of cowboy country is one more far-fetched plot twist. But we can only be grateful, if we've made it through this far, because Nolte comes in and for a quarter of an hour, creates another, better movie.Why this was directed by a Norwegian is hard to guess; one can only say that the producers, who included Terrence Malick (also credited with the film's concept) took a chance and played a long shot. Obviously when the actors are speaking Vietnamese, they were on their own. Maybe that's why everybody starts speaking broken (but in Nguyen's case, surprisingly idiomatic) English after a while. There can be no other good reason.There is no question about the fact that the writing and editing of "The Beautiful Country" are irredeemably flawed. Apart from stilted speeches, the script is marred by more fits and starts and inexplicable or incredible outcomes than can be listed here. This movie can be considered "timely" and socially significant and from that the allowances begin. It has -- or attempts -- an epic quality -- and visually it has fine moments. But the contrived screenplay and stilted dialogue make it painful viewing and an artistic disaster.

jotix100 "The Beautiful Country" is a film that tries to capture one of the worst problems in the world today, illegal people smuggling into that promised land that for some is the United States. Director Hans Peter Moland has created a film with the feeling of a documentary that follows the hard journey of a man in search of a father he never knew. Beautifully photographed by Stuart Drybargh, and with a haunting musical score by Zbigniew Preisner, "The Beautiful Country" could well have been subtitled "His Worst Nightmare".We are introduced to Binh, a tall young man living in Viet Nam after the end of the war. The time is 1990 and we are offered a glimpse of Binh's life where his relatives, as well as the rest of the Vietnamese don't like him because of his mixed race. His father was an American G.I. who married his mother, Mai, but Binh never gets to meet him because Steve, as the father is named, disappeared from Saigon, never to be found again.The film is Binh's odyssey to be reunited with the father he doesn't know. It's a horrific journey where Binh shows his own skills to endure the worst possible conditions to realize his dream of getting to meet a father he never knew. It's a homage to the surviving spirit of a man.Damien Nguyen is Binh, the young mixed race Vietnamese man. He does an outstanding job under Mr. Moland's direction. Nick Nolte, as Steve has some good moments. The supporting cast makes an excellent contribution to the movie.The film proves to what extent a determined man will go in order to get what he wants.