One of my all time favorites.

How sad is this?

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

A little known Terrence Malick produced drama, The Beautiful Country is a quietly touching study of finding oneself in this great big world and a globe spanning journey for a likable and caring young man who was shunned by his countryman through his hard and unforgiving upbringing.Dealing with the not well known facet of Vietnamese lifestyle, where those children born to both Vietnamese and American parents are treated as outcasts, Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland handles the tricky subject matter with aplomb and whether his camera roams the countryside of Vietnam, the refugee camps of Malaysia or the American landscape, The Beautiful Country is most certainly a handsomely crafted tale that shuns its low end budget to create a film that feels both lavish and grand in the non-traditional sense.Throughout almost every scene in this tale is Binh, who after years of wondering decides to set off to not only meet his natural Vietnamese mother but find his G.I American father. Played by then newcomer Damien Nguyen (who in the time since this film has virtually disappeared from the acting scene), Binh is a likable character and is just one of many colourful and realistic characters that create a vibrancy and realism in The Beautiful Country that makes it really something special.Throughout Binh's journey to the lands of America he meets his loving mother, Bai Ling's confused yet kind hearted Ling, Tim Roth's people smuggling boat captain Oh and undoubtedly most importantly Nick Nolte's one time G.I Steve, who Nolte plays with great power. Each of these characters whether on screen for extended periods or brief periods are well designed and constructed and each performer gives it theie all with Bai Ling in particular delivering what could well be her best ever performance.It's not hard to see why a visionary like Malick put his name to such a heartfelt piece of movie making and while The Beautiful Country stumbles in certain areas and at times feels hampered by its production constraints, there's still a touching tale that shines uttermost throughout. It's a shame more have not seen this journey and a shame also that director Moland has not found this vision again in his more recent career but we can be thankful that The Beautiful Country is here for us now to watch and appreciate.4 angry Jango Fett's out of 5

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.

Whoever wrote the script and dialogue did this movie a huge disfavor. Anytime that Binh uses English, it sounds terribly forced and phony. Had the director/storyteller/editors/writers caught this and called for perhaps just ad-libbing or improvisation or perhaps more rewrites etc from/for the actors the movie probably would've been good. As it is the story is interesting and the cinematography at times captivating. The love interest which could've lifted the movie is made to suffer and actually detracts from the movie with lines like "Have no 2000 dollars" and "Boat no go without Ling" or something to that effect. The actors basically are caught red-handed with conversations to spew out that unnecessarily dumb everything down and point to how ignorant and stereotyped the writers preconceived notions are of non-English Asian speakers. The movie unfortunately is something of a mixed bag with great performances from most despite the English mess.

Hans Petter Moland's "The Beautiful Country" is another in a long line of coming-to-America films. This one is about a Vietnamese man who journeys arduously from Saigon to Texas to find his American father. It's a classic theme, and an important one: but fine themes and noble intentions do not a great movie make. Poorly written and edited, draggy, incomprehensible and lacking in verisimilitude (or flat-out unbelievable) in parts and disjointed, an ordeal to watch, the film -- which has some pretty images and some good acting -- is briefly but memorably saved in the last quarter hour when Nick Nolte comes in as the father and he and his son Binh (Damien Nguyen) play off each other in Texas ranch country like a couple of laconic Cormac McCarthy cowboys. Nolte certainly hasn't lost his touch; and the Vietnamese character has had a tight-lipped, stoical quality all along which now suddenly fits and harmonizes in a few quietly effective scenes. Whether it's worth it to sit through all the rest to get to this short sequence is another question.Binh, the central character, is a Vietnamese half-breed man treated brutally in his own country because, as someone fathered by an American soldier, he's regarded as "less than dust." This is true, we find, even though Binh's father married his mother -- and left her behind for reasons not his own. Each major narrative shift is punched forward by an invented-looking event. When the people Binh lives with in the Vietnamese countryside as the film begins gain another family member he's immediately ejected from the household.Binh goes to Saigon where miraculously, though his mother is a nobody working as a house servant, he quickly finds her. Life for Binh is full of Dickensian grimness with sudden strokes of good or bad fortune, and he has a perpetual hangdog look and a creeping walk with shoulders slumped and face down. There's something wrong with his lip. Everyone keeps saying he's ugly, but he's just ordinary: they either perceive him as ugly because of his Caucasian look, or because it's part of the plot. Binh immediately becomes a punching bag as a servant at the house where his mom works, and an accident makes him look guilty of a crime so serious he must immediately flee. Weepingly, his mother sends him off with her young son by somebody else, to make his way -- to America, with a small bundle of cash she's been saving. The hero ends up with his little half-brother in a Malaysian refugee camp, where he meets a resilient Chinese prostitute and would-be singer, Ling (Ling Bai), and they bond. At her urging he escapes and miraculously they are taken onto a rust-coated vessel full of desperate human cargo, a virtual slave ship, headed for America. The captain is Tim Roth, in a typically interesting, but this time wasted, performance. Things are so mismanaged on the boat that the hapless passengers die off like flies, despite a manager's pledge to lose no one since he'll be paid by the head on arrival. Life on board is a seemingly futile struggle to survive. Amid the craziness and death a fantastic game is played wherein the desperate travelers compete by calling out the names of Americana such as foods, places, or movie stars.Binh remains an implausible mixture of hangdog manner and iron will. For no clear reason Captain Oh (Roth) takes a shine to him -- but tells him he'll be out of place wherever he goes. "I know," Binh says.Finally New York comes into view -- but how the passengers are unloaded is one of many explanations the screenplay avoids providing. Binh works in a Chinatown restaurant in the indentured situation he was promised when he talked his way onto the boat -- till somebody remarks that if he has an American father, he's entitled to US citizenship. This revelation causes him to strike out cross country to seek his dad, who's supposed to be in Houston.Since Binh didn't even know where his mother was in Saigon, how he finds his father working as a ranch hand in an obscure corner of cowboy country is one more far-fetched plot twist. But we can only be grateful, if we've made it through this far, because Nolte comes in and for a quarter of an hour, creates another, better movie.Why this was directed by a Norwegian is hard to guess; one can only say that the producers, who included Terrence Malick (also credited with the film's concept) took a chance and played a long shot. Obviously when the actors are speaking Vietnamese, they were on their own. Maybe that's why everybody starts speaking broken (but in Nguyen's case, surprisingly idiomatic) English after a while. There can be no other good reason.There is no question about the fact that the writing and editing of "The Beautiful Country" are irredeemably flawed. Apart from stilted speeches, the script is marred by more fits and starts and inexplicable or incredible outcomes than can be listed here. This movie can be considered "timely" and socially significant and from that the allowances begin. It has -- or attempts -- an epic quality -- and visually it has fine moments. But the contrived screenplay and stilted dialogue make it painful viewing and an artistic disaster.