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| The Rebel
List price: $19.95
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Johnny Nguyen (The Protector) stars as an elite double agent tasked with taking down his own country s freedom fighters. But when he meets a beautiful rebel (pop star Thanh Van Ngo), he rethinks his loyalty to the oppressive French regime and fights back against his sadistic captain (Dustin Nguyen, 21 Jump Street).
A fast-paced, beautifully executed film, The Rebel works hard at being an epic martial arts picture set in 1920's French-occupied Vietnam. While that may sound like a bit much, director Truc Charlie Nguyen does a formidable job creating a plausible scenario with some awesome fighting sequences. While not quite epic, the film is spot on as an action thriller. Johnny Tri Nguyen--who was a stunt double in the Spider-Man movies and impressed fans with his performance in The Protector--stars as Le Van Cuong, a deadly double agent who battles both the French and his evil, power hungry boss Sy, played by Dustin Nguyen (21 Jump Street), who we're accustomed to seeing in sympathetic roles. Sy is one of those cinematic creations who is seemingly indestructible. No matter what is thrown at him, he gets right back up to cause more havoc and Dustin Nguyen is up to the task of playing the sadistic part. Ranked as the biggest Vietnamese film when it was released theatrically in 2006, The Rebel delivers meticulous choreographed fight scenes that show off the martial arts skills of the Nguyens (not related), as well as their female lead Veronica Ngo. Like Oxide and Danny Pang's breakthrough 1999 motion picture Bangkok Dangerous, which helped put Thai films on the cinematic map, The Rebel is helping to put the spotlight on Vietnamese films. This DVD includes the original Vietnamese version (with English subtitles) as well as an English version (the bilingual lead actors dubbed their own voices). --Jae-Ha Kim
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| The Scent of Green Papaya
List price: $29.95
Lowest new price: $125.00
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"Watching it is like seeing a poem for the eyes." That's how Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert described this exquisite, Oscar-nominated, French-Vietnamese film from 1993, which begins in the 1950s and ends more than a decade later during the early years of the Vietnam war. The story is set almost entirely in a Saigon house where a 10-year-old orphan girl named Mui arrives to work as a servant. As she grows into a beautiful young woman, Mui is quietly and carefully observant of everything around her, from the scent of green papaya (hence the title) to the relationship between her employers. The film takes its visual cues from Mui's observations--it's a placid, soothing film that lingers over the physical and emotional details of its setting and story. What's really astonishing about this beautiful film is that director Anh Tran Hung shot it entirely on a soundstage in Paris, but the sights and sounds are so completely convincing that you'd swear the setting is an actual home in Saigon. This remarkable craftsmanship remains invisible to the viewer, and the seductive progression of the story unfolds with exacting visual precision. It's a film about Mui's growth and development, but also about her benevolent effect on the world around her. As such, it's a movie to savor like no other, life affirming and glorious in the memorable depth of its captivating simplicity. --Jeff Shannon
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| The Vertical Ray of the Sun
List price: $29.95
Lowest new price: $33.00
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The lush, super-chic ambience of Tran Anh Hung's third feature, The Vertical Ray of the Sun, presents a beckoning, irresistible vision of Vietnam. The film opens with a sexy brother and sister waking up to the sound of Lou Reed's laconic voice on the stereo. They stretch, practice tai chi, meander toward a late breakfast, and playfully flirt with each other. This morning ritual--slightly disturbing but mostly alluring--recurs as a quietly resistant motif to the disappointment that awaits each character introduced. Shot on location in an impossibly hued Hanoi (lime green and chartreuse abound), the film trails after three beautiful sisters during the month that separates the anniversaries of the deaths of their mother and father. Attempting to protect the ideal memory of their parents' recently assailed love, the sisters recount kindnesses and joke with each other just as the serene charm of the café they run is to be overturned by an unexpected pregnancy and marital infidelities. Tran's lustrous style of collage is unique, pulling the viewer's attention away from imminent conflict and revelation to completely tactile and isolated moments. As with the titular subject of Velvet Underground's "Pale Blue Eyes," the sensual tension lingers on. --Fionn Meade
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| Buffalo Boy
List price: $24.95
Lowest new price: $13.39
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Brand: Buffalo
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A beautifully shot feature from director Nguyen-Vo Nghiem-Minh, BUFFALO BOY is a powerful and nuanced coming-of-age story about 15 year old Kim (Le The Lu), the son of a poor family struggling in 1940's Vietnam. Set in Cà-Mau, the last frontier at the southern tip of Vietnam where the low land meets the sea, the people survive by following the cycles of the flooding and dry seasons. Every rainy season, lasting about six months, water covers the entire land and the farmers must take the buffalo on a long journey to the mountains in search of food. When Kim is sent by his ailing father to find grass for their two starving buffalo, he takes up with a rough and dangerous band of buffalo herders. On the journey, he discovers an adult world of brawls, alcohol, and pillaging-- one that, over time, gives way to friendship, love and the joy of freedom.
Inspired by the classic short story collection, 'Scent of the Cà-Mau Forest' by Son Nam, one of the Vietnam's most distinguished writers and a native of Cà-Mau, BUFFALO BOY is a journey of self-discovery that also gives witness to the exhausting cycles of life under colonialism's poverty.
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| Cyclo
List price: $19.95
Lowest new price: $64.95
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In the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, a young cyclo (pedicab driver) transports anonymous passengers through the teeming streets, trying to eke out a meager living for his two sisters and elderly grandfather. When his bicycle is stolen by a local gang, he descends into the gruesome underbelly of this corrupt and violent city. Seduced by easy money, the Cyclo is swept deeper into the crime ring lead by the quietly charismatic Poet (Tony Leung of CHUNGKING EXPRESS and BULLET IN THE HEAD). Unbeknown to the Cyclo, his older sister (the exquisite star of THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA) has also been mesmerized by the brooding Poet and turns to prostitution to please him. Director Tran Anh Hung, whose brilliant debut THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA established him as a master visualist, fuses the neorealist style of THE BICYCLE THIEF with the kinetic energy of TAXI DRIVER in this gritty tale of innocence lost in the urban jungle of Vietnam.
The city was once named Saigon; it is now called Ho Chi Minh City, and in this powerful second feature by Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya) it looks like a lost circle of hell. Cyclo is a survey of a society in decay, in which conventional plotting gives way to a series of enigmatic episodes and haunting observations. There are two main characters: Cyclo (Le Van Loc) is a poor urban teenager who scratches out a living operating a bicycle taxi in the murderous city traffic; the Poet (Hong Kong star Tony Leung) is the son of an upper-class family who has depressively drifted into pimping and fencing--wartime rackets still thriving in the new Vietnam. Images of appalling violence are played against backgrounds of banal, everyday bustle--a buzzing flow of meaningless, insectlike activity. Hung's vision may be dispiritingly bleak, but his filmmaking is vivid and inventive. Each shot is distinguished by a particular quality of lighting, framing, or texture that lifts it out of the ordinary and into the realm of the strange, ravishing, and insinuating. --Dave Kehr
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