Hollow

A woman jumps off a bridge and a young girl drowns in the same river. A week later the young girl's corpse is found and magically reanimated. She of course is possessed and things start going bump at night and even the day. The director tries to use the horror genre to show us the underbelly of prostitution and human trafficking in Vietnam and is all over the place. When you add people throwing up dirty river water, you are confused if there is a comedy element involved here too. A sad letdown from the director who gave us Journey from the Fall.

Rating: * +

Cyclo

A pedicab driver (Le Van Loc) works hard to keep his family afloat. His elder sister (Tran Nu Yên-Khê) carries water to the market and pitches in too, along with their grizzled grandfather who fixes bike tires. But their "idyllic" life takes a turn for the worse when the pedicab is stolen. The brother plunges into the sleazy and cut throat underbelly of Saigon and the sister is turned to prostitution by her lover (Tony Leung).

The film shows you a young Tony Leung playing an intense role filled with inner conflict and bordering on perversion. Anh Hung Tran masterfully keeps you involved with minimal dialog and chilling imagery but at the end of it all you wonder if he could have gone the extra yard and stitched the pieces a tad tighter.

Rating: * *

Journey from the Fall

1975, the Communist have taken over Vietnam and the people are fleeing its shores. Long (Long Nguyen) unable to see his country suffer, convinces his family to escape to the US and stays behind to find for the Nationalists. But rather than finding freedom for his country he ends up in a re-education camp. His struggle for survival is juxtaposed beautifully with what his family go through on the ocean to freedom. As the film winds around it just shows that in war, freedom is usually just a point of view and hope sometimes is a dangerous but powerful thing.

Rating: * * *

Rescue Dawn

Christian Bale's character finds himself in trouble when his flight gets shot down in Laos. The communists capture him and puts him in a makeshift prison along with a couple of other American soldiers and American sympathisers. While it seems that the spirit of the others have been broken, Lt. Dieter Dengler is not ready to give up and escapes the prison. A true story and impressively made as it focuses on the right things - about a soldier plotting to escape in trying circumstances. One notch higher does rise Christian Bale.

Rating: * * +

Full Metal Jacket

Its like 2 movies in one - the first being the existential part at a South Carolina training academy, the second less idealistic bit in vietnam. I liked the first part as it was documentary like, while I have seen so many Vietnam movies that the 2nd part didnt register anything. In my mind, one of the lesser movies by Stanley Kubrick.

Rating: * *

The Buffalo Boy

Vietnam is beautiful even when covered with water. You get to literally soak up the countryside in this movie. Set in the 1940's before the split, it shows the tale of Kim. There is a bit of everything in this film... booze, weed, fights, young lust, death and life... A young boy's coming of age tale.

Rating: * * +