Free Chol Soo Lee

Saw this last night with the kid units. We all cried. The documentary delivers on so many arcs.

It's great documentary film making. There isn't a lot of footage or recordings of Chol Soo Lee. How to make a film with so little material? Voice overs, a few re-enactments, and lots of texture including great sound work.

It works as a personal story about Chol Soo Lee. A man born with a mountain of bad luck under tragic circumstances. A flawed man by design who was racially profiled and wronged by America's courts and the police. Again and again.

The white people involved in wrongly accusing Lee and jailing him can't tell the difference between a Korean or a Chinese man. The Asian Americans in the documentary notice details about him like his smile and refer to his "beautiful face." Lee wasn't just a Korean man to them. He was born during the Korean War to a single mother into an impoverished family. He didn't want to come to America with his mother at the age of 12. This documentary upends the tired immigrant stories of longing and yearning for a beautiful America that gives a warm embrace to immigrants.

It gives voice and faces to all those who helped him. There's a great sense of Asian American movement building and history. We all felt slighted by the white savior movie "True Believer".

I've read about Lee since I was a child. I've been curious about him for decades. This movie makes him whole. This movie makes all the people who endeavored to help him whole.

This is a story that is so very, very sad in a multitude of ways and for a multitude of reasons! And yet it is all about one thing, and one thing only, and that was and still is Racism towards all non white people. The justice system is totally corrupt so when a person of colour gets entangled with it, it is really bad for them, When you happen to be completely innocent - as Chol Soo Lee was - then the cops and the prosecution will lie, withhold evidence and, as happened in this case, not even bother to question any of the 30 plus Asian witnesses at the crime scene.

It was very sad and sickening to watch this man's life ruined by corrupt cops and the corrupt system! The makers of the documentary did an excellent job with what they had to work with and, I am so glad I stumbled upon it!

Originally Premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in the U. S. Documentary Competition Selection.

"Free Chol Soo Lee" is about the story of Chol Soo Lee, a Korean American who was falsely convicted of a 1973 murder in San Francisco. Prior to watching this I knew very little about the real life incident and I was going to see this at the Sundance Film Festival but I ended up getting too busy with my schedule so I ended up skipping it. Now it's available on MUBI, I gave it a shot. Although it wasn't one of my favorite documentary's that showed this year's Sundance, it still was a good film. Directors Julie Ha and Eugene Yi clearly is very passionate about the film's contexts and they have created a good documentary regarding with it's tough subject. Since Chol Soo Lee passed away in 2014, the documentary features many uses of old footage, recordings that were voiced over from an actor, re-enactments, and lots of textures and editing to add to the film which ended up working very well. Many of the films information was handled honestly and it didn't feel rushed or cheesy.

The presentation throughout the film is really good and the sound mixing was also great. The ranges of emotions throughout helps to build anger, emotions and frustrations regarding the issues of the courts system, asian discrimination and the problems in the United States with Asian Americans. A lot of the conversations from the figures helped to add a lot of interesting contexts with the case. Although there was certain interviews that felt it didn't need to be in the film and certain moments where the pacing did slow down the film, it was still an overall good film.

It's not an amazing unique documentary but there's a lot of importance around discrimination against Asian Americans that I still think is important.

Rating: B+