|
GREEN DRAGON Send This Review to a Friend
What carries "Green Dragon" despite its dramatic contrivances is the unusual nature of its subject. The story of refugees from the Vietnam War settling in the United States is still relatively unknown and fresh material for artistic exploration. Timothy Linh Bui, who was born in Saigon and has been in America since the age of five, has written and directed a film that attempts to awaken audiences to the difficulties faced by transplanted Vietnamese in leaving their world behind and adapting to a new country.
As Saigon was falling and afterward, more than 100,000 Vietnamese made it to the United States, where refugee camps were established. Right off there was a cultural clash, made worse by the separation of families from survivors back home and the breaking up of relatives here in the face of the need to settle them in different locations.
"Green Dragon" takes place at the Camp Pendleton Marine Base in California, where we get to meet some of the Vietnamese, including a youngster named Minh Pham (played by Trung Nguyen) and his uncle, Tai Tran (Don Duong), who is made a camp manager by Sergeant Lance (Patrrick Swayze), in charge of overseeing the refugees. Both Tai Tran and Lance must learn to understand each other.
A friendship develops between Tai and a kindly African-American, Addie (Forest Whitaker), who is a cook at the camp. Addie inspires Tai with painting and music, but the story gets too soggy by far and one traumatic event seems to come out of nowhere but need for plot. Likewise, there is one sequence in which the Vietnamese are made to look overly naïve and ignorant as they venture forth and see the materialistic goodies America has to offer.
But in the last analysis the earnestly acted and directed "Green Dragon" is more interesting for its focus than for its flaws. From Silver Nitrate Releasing.
|