People are voting emotionally.

Amateur movie with Big budget

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

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.

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.

I just saw this movie today, although it's been in release here for several weeks, I think. I was deeply moved.This is truly a beautiful movie: above all about Beauty and Ugliness. The main character, Binh, we're told very early in the movie, is Ugly; his mother is Beautiful; and the rest of the film displays a constant tension between the question What is Beauty? and the question What is Ugliness? The hooker's looks contrast sharply with Binh's. The limpid, natural beauty of Vietnam contrasts sharply with the cold, commercial ugliness of New York. The ugly interior of the ship contrasts sharply with the beauty of the sea. The culminating sequence in which Binh finds his father also says things about perception of Ugliness and Beauty that I don't think I can comment too much on without, perhaps, giving too much of the story away.The actor who played Binh was truly superb, in my opinion. Nick Nolte was excellent, but really more of a cameo; Binh is the main character in the story, and carries his persona well.I do have to note some disappointing features.First, it is perhaps natural in a movie about Vietnam not to include social commentary on ethnicity and race. Yet the 100% uniform (no exception, as far as I know) depiction of White Anglos as either racist or exploitive or both, is literally racist. I guess this kind of depiction is "PC" but if so, frankly it's time for "PC" to grow up. No one who's actually been to Texas, for example, would think that all white Texans go around calling everybody else "boy". Please. This kind of obvious inauthenticity is bound to call into question much else in the film's racial and ethnic commentary.There were some technical problems. In the open boat, when Binh awakes to find a fruit floating in the water, he looks first to his left, then to his right, and only then straight ahead to find land prominently on the horizon directly in front of him. It's a small thing but very inauthentic. People tend to look dead ahead first, not to the side. And a few other items like this too I think, can't recall offhand, but I remember noticing them at the time.But none of this detracts from the overall beauty of The Beautiful Country ... and the complex and challenging examination it poses of Beauty and Ugliness in many, many expressions. A wonderful movie.

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.