The Beautiful Country (2004)

A Major Disappointment

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Damien Nguyen is incredible in his first film role as a child with a Vietnamese mother and American father, who is trying to find out where he fits in the world. As a mixed race child, he is shunned by the Vietnamese and cannot even hide in a small village with his grandmother.He sets out on a journey to find his mother and, ultimately, his father in America. It is a long and hazardous trip. Along the way he is befriended by the incredibly beautiful Bail Ling and by Tim Roth. He eventually finds his father; played tenderly by Nick Nolte.It is a film for drama lovers. It moves slow, but that is necessary to develop the story. There is never a dead spot as the tapestry of his life is carefully woven. Loss, hardship, fear, embarrassment, love, sacrifice - they are all there and critically important to the story.The ending is surprising, tender, and fitting. It is a movie that will not disappoint.

This was a wonderful story and totally believable. Having known of those who fled Vietnam the story is realistic. Having spent some time in Sout East Asia, the scenery was outstanding. However, I'm left hanging at the end. What happened to the mother? How did the relationship between Binh and his father end? We are left wondering how Binh was able to track down his father with little information and what happened to the character played by Bai Ling? She was such an important part of Binh's life. The acting overall was great and Nick Nole was outstanding. I've been a fan of Nole for many years and found this to be a performance of merit.

I just saw this movie today, although it's been in release here for several weeks, I think. I was deeply moved.This is truly a beautiful movie: above all about Beauty and Ugliness. The main character, Binh, we're told very early in the movie, is Ugly; his mother is Beautiful; and the rest of the film displays a constant tension between the question What is Beauty? and the question What is Ugliness? The hooker's looks contrast sharply with Binh's. The limpid, natural beauty of Vietnam contrasts sharply with the cold, commercial ugliness of New York. The ugly interior of the ship contrasts sharply with the beauty of the sea. The culminating sequence in which Binh finds his father also says things about perception of Ugliness and Beauty that I don't think I can comment too much on without, perhaps, giving too much of the story away.The actor who played Binh was truly superb, in my opinion. Nick Nolte was excellent, but really more of a cameo; Binh is the main character in the story, and carries his persona well.I do have to note some disappointing features.First, it is perhaps natural in a movie about Vietnam not to include social commentary on ethnicity and race. Yet the 100% uniform (no exception, as far as I know) depiction of White Anglos as either racist or exploitive or both, is literally racist. I guess this kind of depiction is "PC" but if so, frankly it's time for "PC" to grow up. No one who's actually been to Texas, for example, would think that all white Texans go around calling everybody else "boy". Please. This kind of obvious inauthenticity is bound to call into question much else in the film's racial and ethnic commentary.There were some technical problems. In the open boat, when Binh awakes to find a fruit floating in the water, he looks first to his left, then to his right, and only then straight ahead to find land prominently on the horizon directly in front of him. It's a small thing but very inauthentic. People tend to look dead ahead first, not to the side. And a few other items like this too I think, can't recall offhand, but I remember noticing them at the time.But none of this detracts from the overall beauty of The Beautiful Country ... and the complex and challenging examination it poses of Beauty and Ugliness in many, many expressions. A wonderful movie.

(watched in Toronto) extra spoiler warning When talking about a movie, I sometimes slip into the bad habit of starting from the end. But this time, I think it's forgivable.When I read in some of the local (Toronto) reviews that top-billed Nick Nolte appears only in the last fifteen minutes of the 2-hour movie but is well worth waiting for, I reserved my judgment. After seeing the movie, I'll have to borrow Vince Lombardi's famous quote: seeing Nick Nolte is not everything about watching this movie; it's the only thing. Well, maybe I exaggerated. But let me start from the beginning."The beautiful country" might have been an alternative plot for Puccini to end Madam Butterfly, or Webber to end Miss Saigon. The movie is actually structured neatly into 4 acts.Act 1, in two scenes (the home village and Saigon), sets the stage for Binh (Damien Nguyan) to set out on an epic journey to look for his American father in Taxes, a G.I. who legally married his mother but was there one day, gone the next, leaving behind only a picture of the couple and their infant son Binh.Act 2 takes place in a Malaysian refugee camp, where he encounters Chinese refugee Ling (BAI Ling), initially through the kid half-brother his mother has asked him to take along.Act 3 depicts the trio's ordeal on a refugee-smuggling ship run by Captain Oh (Tim Roth) and the little boy's tragic death from illness.The final Act could be one with multiple scenes: Binh and Ling's experience in New York's Chinatown, Binh's southbound quest and his final reunion with his father Steve (Nick Notle).Starting with some extraordinarily beautiful photography of Vietnam's serene countryside, the movie tells the story of Binh in such a sensitive, honest way that, even when some familiar cliché scenes are inevitable, it is never mawkish. Development of the relationship between Binh and Ling is handled tastefully, and their communication in broken English is the most natural thing, just as it would be for a German and a Frenchman whose common language is English, which neither really knows well.Nguyan, billed under "introducing", carries the entire movie from beginning to end, with an uncanny ability to touch the audience through his sincerity. Bai is cast in her best role to-date and she portrays the defiance, devotion and passion of this complex woman perfectly. Tarantino's favourite Tim Roth (or one of them at least) also puts in a memorable performance as the ruthless but benevolent protector (of Binh), in fact quite a familiar Charlie Dickens character.But in the end, it's all Nick Nolte, whose performance last year against Maggie Cheung in "Clean" is one of the best in any film (she won best actress in Cannes; his was only in a supporting role but would have won had there been such a category). That last, 15-minute scene of reunion of father and son in The Beautiful Country, played to perfection by Nolte and Nguyan, is reason enough for me to go and see the movie again.