Very Cool!!!

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This is based on the real life of Christina Noble. She is an Irishwoman who hails from Dublin. The film chronicles her life in flashback form. But we start in Vietnam in 1989; the terrible wars are over but never forgotten I fear. The scars are everywhere including in the many street children, some of whom have been orphaned and others have trauma that has left them fending for themselves in a country that is trying to rebuild itself with scant resources.Enter Christina and she immediately knows that she has to help, not so easy in a country that has had enough interference from foreigners. We also see what happened to her when she was growing up in Ireland and the abuse and suffering she had to endure. Some of her experiences would be enough to make the strongest give up, buy she seems made of very rare stuff indeed.To say this is inspirational is an understatement and I stumbled on this as it stars Deidre O'Kane who played the mother in the great 'Moone Boy' series. She is simply superb in this as indeed are the entire cast. Special mention to Liam Cunningham who plays her alcoholic father and puts in a brutal but convincing performance. I had few expectations of this but once it got started I was blown away. This is one you will want to recommend to your friends.

Noble is much more than just a film biography. It tells without hagiography the story of Christine Noble, who against all the odds, survived trauma after trauma in her native Ireland and went on to help literally thousands in Vietnam.The film-making isn't top drawer, but, boy, the true story is - there are good central performances by the Christines at their different ages and attention has been spent on costuming etc, in the Sixties segments - but this is really a film about one woman's extraordinary resolve to fight poverty against seemingly impossible odds.This is a film I would warmly recommend - it has more to say about determination, perseverance and resolve than most films and it does not shy away or coat over its subject, It's well handled and well delivered and well worth your time.

This film is definitely worth seeing for a life story that is so incredible it seems like fiction.I had heard about Christina Noble at school, but I can see now that my teachers left out some of the horrors of her early life. She was clearly a very religious person and that comes across strongly in the film. However, the film also shows the darker sides of religious orders.All three actresses are absolutely superb.Emotionally, I think this is a hard film to watch not only because of the hardships the lead faces, but also the children in Vietnam. Having said that, I think it is also an important film for a lot of people. It is going to speak to people who grew up disadvantaged and people who experienced all kinds of traumas and hardships. It has a lot to say about how a victim can become powerful.Deirdre O'Kane has great presence as the older Christina.I definitely recommend this film. It touches on some shameful parts of Irish and world history, but it also has a lot to say about courage, perseverance and hope.

While this is all sourced as being based on a true story, I almost find that hard to accept, simply because of the sheer number of hurdles involved, on top of the appropriate naming of the titular character, Christina Noble.The film straddles two different arcs; on one hand is the early life of Christina, and all the hardships she faced, and it's incredibly bleak. It makes it all the more impressive to me with how bright and energetic a character Christina is by both actresses that play her as a child and a young woman, and it does feel like the same character the entire way. Christina's Irish upbringing also is somewhat familiar cinematically now as the state of Ireland's treatment of children was showcased recently in another true story, Philomena.While her early life is simply, well, tragic, the other arc is of much more mixed tone, as she travels to Vietnam after her kids have grown up, now played by Deirdre O'Kane, and she does a great job as Christina, from the humour and tenderness to the strength and determination. She takes the role very naturally, and her portrayal of Christina is very warm, and I think part of this may be O'Kane's involvement with Christina Noble's charity beforehand, so I think her performance was strengthened by her personal investment. As she finds a calling helping the homeless children of Vietnam, and tries to figure out how to help, she serves as this great and uplifting protagonist, all the more impressive given that this is, again, actually a true story and really did happen, to at least some extent.In Vietnam, the story isn't simply carried by O'Kane, but has a great set of supporting roles. Right off the bat, the employee at the hotel front desk that calls himself "Mr. Front Desk" or some such thing has a great role as this begrudgingly helpful curmudgeon, and almost all his lines were great, both in writing, and in performance (and I'm somewhat annoyed that I don't remember a name ever being used for him for me to give the actor proper due). The children in the film are great, and a few of them even have more involved roles, and they actually have all been, or still are, helped by Christina Noble's charity and that makes me all the more impressed by their involvement as well.It would be very easy of me to criticise the overly dramatic nature of this film and it's lack of believability, but what's so impressive is that I don't think it actually did take that many liberties to make it the story it is, and as raw as the film is, it's genuine. It does make the film much more powerful, and the points it makes about being poor being a constant experience anywhere is a very salient one, and the way Christina steps up the challenges in Vietnam is extremely compelling. There's so many social elements on both small and large scales that this film touches upon, and that's quite impressive.There's something I find very moving about a film with such a vibrant person as Christina Noble (as depicted, but apparently fairly accurate) that faces so many challenges with that strength.