User reviews

One of the least attractive aspects of the American movie industry is that while crap, such as "Fever Pitch" (the remake), "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Be Cool," get millions of dollars spent on marketing and promotion and are splashed on thousands of screens, a gem like "The Beautiful Country" gets barely released. Even then, it only hits the major cities.

I pretty much knew little to nothing about this film when I saw it. I vaguely recall seeing an Ebert & Roeper review of it, though I don't remember when they recommended it. What a completely wonderful surprise this one turned out to be.

"The Beautiful Country" is as much about the lengths to which immigrants will go to come to the United States as it is about a man's search for his father. Writer Sabina Murray (who apparently was hired by Terrence Malick and Edward R. Pressman to write a film about immigrants and came up with this idea) deftly uses Binh's (Damien Nguyen) quest as a device to depict the hardships of immigrants.

What ultimately makes "The Beautiful Country" a shattering experience is its complete unpretentiousness. There isn't a single emotion in this film that isn't earned. It's as much a testament to Murray's script as it is to the performances.

Nick Nolte might be the name actor in this film, but his role's relatively small. But, just as he did in "Hotel Rwanda" (2004), Nolte takes what's essentially a cameo and turns it into something memorable. He gives his character true depth.

The two surprises in this film are Nguyen and Bai Ling as Ling, a sexy Chinese refugee who is willing to do anything - anything - to fulfill her dreams. This is undoubtedly the best thing Bai Ling has done. Usually cast as caricatures or in minor roles, she imbues her character with genuine feeling. We understand and feel for this woman, her struggles and her passions.

Nguyen completely dominates the film. He doesn't do anything wrong. He underplays Binh so expertly, you'd think this was a veteran actor, not a novice. It's such an incredibly honest performance, you wouldn't for an instant believe Nguyen is a surfer boy from California. It's one of the year's best performances.

At a time when the news media and politicians seem to be concentrating on demonizing immigrants, it's important to see a film like this, to see why people leave their homelands, endure unimaginable suffering to come here. True, the immigrants in this film aren't of Arab descent or Haitian - we all know exactly how they'd be treated. But "The Beautiful Country" is all about the beauty and ugliness of life. It's also emotionally devastating at times. And what makes the film all the more remarkable is that the gut-wrenching scenes never come across as any sort of contrivance. There's no emotional blackmail here; the actors play the scenes straight and with a gesture, a simple word, manage to bring us to tears.

"The Beautiful Country" is a rare treasure, a film that never cheats us, never asks for what it hasn't earned and still manages to be deeply affecting. And in keeping with the rest of the film, the final scene is simply perfect.

A film like this deserves a much larger audience than it got. This is why we go to the movies.

This movie is not specifically about the Vietnam war, but it gives a good perspective that is not biased in any way. It proves that justice and freedom are not present for all people, only the "lucky" ones. The people that are born in the western world. We take it all for granted what 70% of the population can just envy. It is usually said that if you work hard you will always become something significant. But after watching this movie, I understand that no matter how hard you work, if you are born poor you WILL most likely stay poor. The story follows Binh, a half Vietnamese and half American man. He isnt accepted in society in Vietnam just becasue of this hard fact "he is the enemy" and therefore he is worthless. This has become a major issue in Vietnam after the Vietnam war, but it has never been taken this seriously before. This is a very good movie! I would reccomend everyone to watch this, it gives everyone a humanitarian lesson about how we are all humanbeings no matter where we come from.

Classic tale of redemption, brimming with drama and a lead character that says little, but who you quickly relate to and associate yourself with. Starts of kind of slow, but after 15-20 minutes, the movie picks up and never slows down, with high drama and classic storytelling. A must-see. The movie is set to the backdrop of the aftermath of the Vietnam war in Vietnam, and portrays the poverty-stricken environment they are forced to live in. It then moves on to show the desperation of would-be American immigrants fleeing from one land that doesn't want them to sneak into another. After watching this movie, you will definitely have a greater appreciation for what some immigrants have to go through.

My son, Tam, and I were reunited on July 24, 2003, after a separation of 36 years. His mother, Huong, tried to flee Vietnam in May, 1975, but due to circumstances beyond her control, she missed the boat which was to take her and Tam to freedom. The communists caught the boat on the Saigon River, and sank it, killing all aboard. Huong finally decided to stick it out and worked hard to raise the money to come to the US. After arriving with Tam in 1994, she died of a stroke later that year. By a stroke of fortune, Tam, in 2003 found someone (an American) who could access my name in the Navy records. Within a few days of locating my name, the navy received a request to forward a letter from Tam. Needless to say, as I never knew if Tam or his mother had survived the war, I was stunned when I opened the large manila envelope from the Navy Department. The rest is history, and we are together. Tam lives and works near Los Angeles, and I recently retired and moved to a close-by state.

The movie, "The Beautiful Country", which I first viewed last night (3/12/07) really struck home. I feel like "I'm one in a million".

"The Beautiful Country" is a film that tries to capture one of the worst problems in the world today, illegal people smuggling into that promised land that for some is the United States. Director Hans Peter Moland has created a film with the feeling of a documentary that follows the hard journey of a man in search of a father he never knew. Beautifully photographed by Stuart Drybargh, and with a haunting musical score by Zbigniew Preisner, "The Beautiful Country" could well have been subtitled "His Worst Nightmare".

We are introduced to Binh, a tall young man living in Viet Nam after the end of the war. The time is 1990 and we are offered a glimpse of Binh's life where his relatives, as well as the rest of the Vietnamese don't like him because of his mixed race. His father was an American G.I. who married his mother, Mai, but Binh never gets to meet him because Steve, as the father is named, disappeared from Saigon, never to be found again.

The film is Binh's odyssey to be reunited with the father he doesn't know. It's a horrific journey where Binh shows his own skills to endure the worst possible conditions to realize his dream of getting to meet a father he never knew. It's a homage to the surviving spirit of a man.

Damien Nguyen is Binh, the young mixed race Vietnamese man. He does an outstanding job under Mr. Moland's direction. Nick Nolte, as Steve has some good moments. The supporting cast makes an excellent contribution to the movie.

The film proves to what extent a determined man will go in order to get what he wants.

The children of American GI's in Vietnam were treated as second-class citizens – walking symbols of American control, destruction, and occupation. Binh (Damien Nguyen) lives with a foster family, can only eat their leftovers, and longs to find his own family, including the mother who couldn't support him and the American father he never knew. With only a picture of his parents, he leaves the village in search of his roots.

Binh finds his mother (and a young half brother) in Saigon, but after a deadly accident, he and his new brother are forced to flee the city and the country in search of America. Binh endures the purgatory of a Malaysian refugee camp and survives the hell of an illegal slave ship.

His travels are extraordinary and devastating, but the character of Binh is reason enough to see this incomparable epic. He has lived his life as an outcast, full of sorrow and shame. He rarely has the courage to look other people in the eye. But every catastrophic event in his journey brings him strength and courage, so that by the time he finds his father, he's man enough to face him. Or is he?

Underrated by critics and virtually ignored by the mainstream film press, I found this to be one of the unexpected surprises of 2004. An amazing film covering the often grim fate of Amerasians (ie, children of American servicemen and Vietnamese mothers, often illegitimate and to the detriment and neglect of the mothers/children), one of the messy side-effects of a messy and mismanaged war.

This film was as haunting as it was brilliantly conceived and surprisingly well constructed for a low-budget film. I wish the actors all the best, as their tour-de-force performances captured the essence of the struggles any desperate person faces in trying to create a better life out from poverty, neglect, and despair. An absolute MUST-SEE for any serious independent/off-the-beaten-track film connoisseur....

I saw this film at the Tribeca Film Festival yesterday, and thought it was the best film in the festival. The cinematography was beautiful, the story was touching, and the characters were rich. There is one point in the movie where something tragic happens and it moved the entire audience to tears, including myself. The script is excellent, creative, and intelligent. The director did an extraordinary job and so did the lead actor, who had never made a feature film before. Tim Roth and Nick Nolte also give strong performances. I think this film will become a classic and end up winning some big awards. This is one of those epic monumental stories that should not be forgotten. An extraordinary and touching film.

The Beautiful Country is a drama ostensibly concerned with consequences of the Vietnam War, but I would argue its content makes that conflict almost incidental. The story is, rather, a more general parable about migration, assimilation, identity and family - an unabashedly humanist film.

We begin with a young Vietnamese man, Binh, whose father was an American G.I. There are a few brief scenes which outline the discrimination he faces, and his abrupt departure from rural Vietnam to seek his mother seems, like much of the film's plot, somewhat contrived. Why now? What specifically drove him? He faced such discrimination all his life.

His journey to Saigon (oddly, not referred to as Ho Chi Minh City in the subtitle) and his mother then grows into a larger quest to find his father in America. It is only at this point that Binh's motivation becomes fleshed out, and the idea of the immigrant identity comes to the foreground.

The main impetus for a harrowing journey halfway across the world is twofold. One, Binh seeks a better life for himself and his young half-brother. Two, he seeks to know his father, perhaps to better understand himself. America is referred to, early on, as "the beautiful country", but that enigmatic phrase will haunt the film's realism.

The plight of illegal immigrants is something we all are aware of - dangerous transportation into the country and degrading treatment inside the country. These sequences, I think, undermine the film's more powerful message, because we might be tempted to see the film as a general rallying cry for immigration reform in general, instead of an exploration of one immigrant's journey.

The film succeeds best when it pauses from the harsh realities to focus on Binh's inward journey. If the world outside him, and its hardships, are overstated, then he is likewise understated in expressing his own troubles.

The journey, and his perseverance, then becomes a metaphor for Binh's exploration of what, exactly, the beautiful country is. At one point, one character even refers to Vietnam as the beautiful country - a seemingly confusing idea, since Binh traveled so far to get away from the country which would not accept him.

What is beautiful to Binh, then, is relative; he seeks acceptance, and comfort. He is, really, looking for a place which would be reasonably called home. Perhaps most immigration is more practical than this, but the idea that there is a place where one belongs is, indeed, compelling, and I think it's what drives most of our lives.

The Beautiful Country, then, speaks to everyone's desire to fit in and shows how identity is formed not by complacency, but by active search.

Truly one the most beautiful movies i`ve ever seen. It feels very honest and true to the story about a young vieatnamise boy who goes to USA in search of his father. This journey is visually remarkable and shows what refugees have to deal with in search of a better life. It`s easy to see that Therence Malick is one of the producers behind this projeckt considering that it`s the pictures that speaks most, not the dialogue. Damien Nguyen gives a fantastic first performance as the leading character Binh. In supporting roles we find Nick Nolte, Tim Roth and Bai Ling who helps in a great way to bringing the story to life. Highly Recomended!

An Epic Story of Hope constrained by budget and limited artistic ambition. Seeing as Terrence Malick produced this, I expected something haunting and lyrical. Instead, we get a typical Norwegian co-production ("Revolution" with Al Pacino, anyone?), where - quite possibly - good intentions are scuppered by a dreadful screenplay, and where many of the characters are reduced to stereotypes. The "me-Tarzan-you-Jane" English dialogue between the non-English-speaking protagonists is particularly cringeworthy – one could speculate whether Nick Nolte and Tim Roth ad-libbed their own, as they almost sound like real people. The story is loaded with implausibility: we are expected to believe that Binh can speak a smattering of English after having spent his entire life living as a peasant slave (his vocabulary, but unfortunately not grammatical command, increases impressively in the Malayan refugee camp, without the benefit of night classes). Coincidence is rife; I wonder whether an hour or two has been edited from the first third: he tracks down his mother in Ho Chi Minh City almost immediately - after bumping into his thirty year younger half brother, who nonchalantly recognises him! Mum gives him a gold locket (or something similar of great value) as they part, but this is never referred to again. His relationship with "Me Dead Inside" Ling is supposed to provide the obligatory "love interest", but feels as artificial as Leonardo and Cameron in "Gangs Of New York".

The voyage in the rust bucket of a boat does convey a sense of the appalling conditions that human trafficking entails. Indeed, the only time the film is remotely exciting and unpredictable, is the jerky, hand-held footage shot from the bridge during choppy weather conditions. (Incidentally, a boat cruise from Malaysia to New York via The Cape Of Good Hope and the African coast, without stopping for fuel or supplies, is certainly an epic journey). The beautiful shot of the New York skyline echoes Malick's use of magic hour, but I want to know why the Coast Guard didn't show up. Perhaps they were watching the Super Bowl, or something. Of course, Binh manages to track down his blind old Dad on a remote farm in Texas, with the same navigational flair he displayed in Ho Chi Minh City. I was impressed at how Nick Nolte could wander around digging fields and feeding horses on a large ranch without the aid of a guide dog or white stick. For demonstration of how a story about the travails befalling refugees could be structured and shot on a small budget, check out Michael Winterbottom's far superior "In This World".

This was a great movie. It was a sincere and a true movie. Compared to legally blond which is a moral about being blond, stupid and kindhearted is not how the world works like. This movie shows the cruelty and the sadness which is out there in the real world, and it was made in such a good way that i was about crying many times in the movie. This young man who has rejected by his own people, is seeking his destiny in going to America. He brings his much younger brother along with him, and this movies shows the struggle poor people from area with out hopes have to go through in fighting their rights for a better life. People takes advantages of their hopelessness and he and many others end up in this boat with some cynical people smugglers who want to use them as cheap labor and take advantage of the girls for prostitution to make a nice profit for them self. This movie is about hopes, sadness, exploitation of people, cynicism. This movie had also good names like Tim Roth, Bai Ling and Nick Nolte, who delivers a good job like always. I recommend you people to drop the plans of seeing some stupid love comedy for a change, and watch this movie which is very emotional and sad in a very artistic way.

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.

To be honest, I only got this movie because Bai Ling was in it. She was a secondary character, however, and the main story was about this half Vietnamese, half American boy who searches for his parents.

The film is soul wrenching at times, showing this quiet and calm boy going through hell just to survive and go on, but most of the time it just slowly builds up empathy and outrage. There is a timeless quality about the feel of the movie (I honestly thought it was an 80's film) and the acting is top notch. The first half of it is in Vietnamese, the other in English, after the main character crosses the ocean.

Bottom line: quite good, however really slow paced. There are not many scenes to make the blood boil, so you need to be in the mood for a slow drama. It is worth it, though. It makes people understand that there are misfortunes, and then there are misfortunes.

Well worth seeing. It serves to give one a good understanding of the types of back stories, trials and travails that dispossessed immigrants coming to America might have experienced. I guess in some ways it could be similar to the story of many poor immigrants who came here in the past. Therefore it should have a universal appeal to American audiences. Next time we look at a first generation immigrant to this country we might have more of an appreciation of the humanity that we are encountering. Great performances all round, good screenplay, and thoughtfully directed. Bai Ling gives an excellent performance, and Damien Nguyen is outstanding in a first time lead role. He's in every scene and carries the entire picture... an incredible performance. One of the better movies of 2004.

It was my privilege to see this movie at the Plaza Theater in Atlanta on a Saturday afternoon with about 150 Vietnamese: grandparents, parents, and kids obviously "made in the U.S.A." . . it was even a greater privilege to be allowed to sit next to a typical third grader who's command of English is far better than his understanding of the parlance of the Old Country. His folks and grandparents, uncles, etc. were all around us, but allowed the lad to ask me questions during the movie while giving his family leisure to thoroughly enjoy it. I whispered my replies as plainly as I could, given the situation, and as we walked out of the show he wished me well and genuinely thanked me (with a little familial prodding).... My situation is that I am a Vietnam veteran whose reckless, existential behavior in 1971 may well have resulted in a son or daughter, as another reviewer, ''huckfinn'', above.... Amazingly, the LORD saw fit in His grace and mercy to save me in 1973, and off and on I cast about for a way to make peace with that part of my sordid past.... well, after I had been married for almost four years, Dung Tanh Phu came into my life, a blessing from World Vision. "Young", as we called him, born just after I left The Nam, had had no little difficulty arriving to America as one of the Boat people. His aunt, Mui and he were the only ones of his family to escape in 1979. So traumatized was Young that he was a problem child in his first, foster home. When we received him (in the name of Christ), he was tubercular. The wife put him on macrobiotics for six months and amazed the folks at the St. Louis County Health Department. We kept him for three formative years and turned him back over to his aunt in somewhat less than delightful circumstances, but that's a longer story.... I won my war by having such wonderful opportunities given to me for ministry to the wonderful Vietnamese and may yet win another of my wars - if God wills - but three's a story yet to be written... suffice it to say that I dearly loved my experience of this film, and hope to share it with my grown children someday. Blessings!