smokingkorean
Joined Aug 2022
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Reviews1
smokingkorean's rating
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.
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.