7/10
Austin Movie Show review
6 August 2005
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?
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