Beautiful Country, The

USA / Norway 2004, 120 minutes
Dir. Hans Petter Moland
In English, Mandarin, Vietnamese with English subtitles
Rating: [M]
Genres: Drama

Topics: Rites-of-passage.

Feat. Nick Nolte, Tim Roth, Ling Bai, Temuera Morrison, Damien Nguyen

Aroview: A troubling account of how a young Vietnamese man (Nguyen) - the offspring of a brief liason between a Vietnamese woman and an American G.I. - tries to get to 'the beautiful country', ie. America, to find his father.

Enduring a long boat trip, tied servitude in New York and numerous other hassles, an encounter with his Texan father (Nolte) eventually seems possible. Distinguished by wonderful cinematography (by Kiwi Stuart Dryburgh) and a sweeping sense of global injustice, this disappointingly stretches out the protagonist's troubles to exhaustive length. Even so, it is a worthy tale and a pleasure to watch.