Una vida nueva

My son, Tam, and I were reunited on July 24, 2003, after a separation of 36 years. His mother, Huong, tried to flee Vietnam in May, 1975, but due to circumstances beyond her control, she missed the boat which was to take her and Tam to freedom. The communists caught the boat on the Saigon River, and sank it, killing all aboard. Huong finally decided to stick it out and worked hard to raise the money to come to the US. After arriving with Tam in 1994, she died of a stroke later that year. By a stroke of fortune, Tam, in 2003 found someone (an American) who could access my name in the Navy records. Within a few days of locating my name, the navy received a request to forward a letter from Tam. Needless to say, as I never knew if Tam or his mother had survived the war, I was stunned when I opened the large manila envelope from the Navy Department. The rest is history, and we are together. Tam lives and works near Los Angeles, and I recently retired and moved to a close-by state.

The movie, "The Beautiful Country", which I first viewed last night (3/12/07) really struck home. I feel like "I'm one in a million".

One of the least attractive aspects of the American movie industry is that while crap, such as "Fever Pitch" (the remake), "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Be Cool," get millions of dollars spent on marketing and promotion and are splashed on thousands of screens, a gem like "The Beautiful Country" gets barely released. Even then, it only hits the major cities.

I pretty much knew little to nothing about this film when I saw it. I vaguely recall seeing an Ebert & Roeper review of it, though I don't remember when they recommended it. What a completely wonderful surprise this one turned out to be.

"The Beautiful Country" is as much about the lengths to which immigrants will go to come to the United States as it is about a man's search for his father. Writer Sabina Murray (who apparently was hired by Terrence Malick and Edward R. Pressman to write a film about immigrants and came up with this idea) deftly uses Binh's (Damien Nguyen) quest as a device to depict the hardships of immigrants.

What ultimately makes "The Beautiful Country" a shattering experience is its complete unpretentiousness. There isn't a single emotion in this film that isn't earned. It's as much a testament to Murray's script as it is to the performances.

Nick Nolte might be the name actor in this film, but his role's relatively small. But, just as he did in "Hotel Rwanda" (2004), Nolte takes what's essentially a cameo and turns it into something memorable. He gives his character true depth.

The two surprises in this film are Nguyen and Bai Ling as Ling, a sexy Chinese refugee who is willing to do anything - anything - to fulfill her dreams. This is undoubtedly the best thing Bai Ling has done. Usually cast as caricatures or in minor roles, she imbues her character with genuine feeling. We understand and feel for this woman, her struggles and her passions.

Nguyen completely dominates the film. He doesn't do anything wrong. He underplays Binh so expertly, you'd think this was a veteran actor, not a novice. It's such an incredibly honest performance, you wouldn't for an instant believe Nguyen is a surfer boy from California. It's one of the year's best performances.

At a time when the news media and politicians seem to be concentrating on demonizing immigrants, it's important to see a film like this, to see why people leave their homelands, endure unimaginable suffering to come here. True, the immigrants in this film aren't of Arab descent or Haitian - we all know exactly how they'd be treated. But "The Beautiful Country" is all about the beauty and ugliness of life. It's also emotionally devastating at times. And what makes the film all the more remarkable is that the gut-wrenching scenes never come across as any sort of contrivance. There's no emotional blackmail here; the actors play the scenes straight and with a gesture, a simple word, manage to bring us to tears.

"The Beautiful Country" is a rare treasure, a film that never cheats us, never asks for what it hasn't earned and still manages to be deeply affecting. And in keeping with the rest of the film, the final scene is simply perfect.

A film like this deserves a much larger audience than it got. This is why we go to the movies.

This was a great movie. It was a sincere and a true movie. Compared to legally blond which is a moral about being blond, stupid and kindhearted is not how the world works like. This movie shows the cruelty and the sadness which is out there in the real world, and it was made in such a good way that i was about crying many times in the movie. This young man who has rejected by his own people, is seeking his destiny in going to America. He brings his much younger brother along with him, and this movies shows the struggle poor people from area with out hopes have to go through in fighting their rights for a better life. People takes advantages of their hopelessness and he and many others end up in this boat with some cynical people smugglers who want to use them as cheap labor and take advantage of the girls for prostitution to make a nice profit for them self. This movie is about hopes, sadness, exploitation of people, cynicism. This movie had also good names like Tim Roth, Bai Ling and Nick Nolte, who delivers a good job like always. I recommend you people to drop the plans of seeing some stupid love comedy for a change, and watch this movie which is very emotional and sad in a very artistic way.

Classic tale of redemption, brimming with drama and a lead character that says little, but who you quickly relate to and associate yourself with. Starts of kind of slow, but after 15-20 minutes, the movie picks up and never slows down, with high drama and classic storytelling. A must-see. The movie is set to the backdrop of the aftermath of the Vietnam war in Vietnam, and portrays the poverty-stricken environment they are forced to live in. It then moves on to show the desperation of would-be American immigrants fleeing from one land that doesn't want them to sneak into another. After watching this movie, you will definitely have a greater appreciation for what some immigrants have to go through.

The children of American GI's in Vietnam were treated as second-class citizens – walking symbols of American control, destruction, and occupation. Binh (Damien Nguyen) lives with a foster family, can only eat their leftovers, and longs to find his own family, including the mother who couldn't support him and the American father he never knew. With only a picture of his parents, he leaves the village in search of his roots.

Binh finds his mother (and a young half brother) in Saigon, but after a deadly accident, he and his new brother are forced to flee the city and the country in search of America. Binh endures the purgatory of a Malaysian refugee camp and survives the hell of an illegal slave ship.

His travels are extraordinary and devastating, but the character of Binh is reason enough to see this incomparable epic. He has lived his life as an outcast, full of sorrow and shame. He rarely has the courage to look other people in the eye. But every catastrophic event in his journey brings him strength and courage, so that by the time he finds his father, he's man enough to face him. Or is he?