Blue Bayou

Blue Bayou-720P_480P

Blue Bayou-720P

source: Blue Bayou

What a beautiful and poignant story. The characters are real, tugs at the heartstrings and lays bare the total lack off empathy in the modern immigration processes. The fact that it depicts real life anguish makes this film signifficant. I really hope it can pass it's message to millions and help to tear down the wall.

The major story theme is the U. S. policy of deporting people who were adopted from other countries & may have lived in the U. S. for decades. Script seemed sympathetic to that issue yet oddly the central character had a history of major crimes. Would have liked a more balanced presentation of the reasoning behind what seems an unfair deporting of adoptees especially after such a long period.

The movie does not start with a bang, and cinema-goers who want an immediate rush from films will miss that fist heady scene, as it does not exist in this film. However you quickly realise that the entire gamut of human emotion is in this film. Everything from shame, to pride, humility to ignorant arrogance, deep despair to transcendent joy. Everything is there in abundance and there are so many moral questions too. How far would you go to achieve a common aim? What would you relinquish of yourself to help others, what would you do to shame yourself for the sole purpose of raising others. There are also modern themes represented such as consent and police brutality, but much older, ancient themes such as morality, values, personal accountability and selflessness. Sadly this film also shows the flaws of a government that over-rides humanity in it's wild aim to follow policy. A controlling state that whilst it takes in refugees from unsettled nations, it makes refugees of it's own people. And every happiness, every heartbreak, every moment of emotion is finely and superbly acted and directed. Man's inhumanity to man is a term often bandied about when describing war. But the greatest inhumanity sis the cruelty exacted on people in times of peace, in the name of policy. There are no great statesman left in the world now who can protect and cherish us and our country. There is only vanity and personal prowess. Watch this film without any interruptions or gaps and you will see why western countries are nowhere near as great or as free as they like to have us believe.

I was liking the movie until I saw a scene in the beginning when the stepdaughter was in the tat parlor listening to the client and the employees cussing up a storm! Then throughout the movie, too much language! Why add so much language. Saying a few here and there is alright to prove a point, but so many in one scene isn't right.

"Listen to him, look at him. He's American." As a Korean-American man raised in the Louisiana bayou works hard to make a life for his family, he must confront the ghosts of his past as he discovers that he could be deported from the only country he has ever called home. Blue Bayou hit some fall festivals, mainly because of its release shortly after them, but there was definite potential in creating a touching story. Justin Chon has worked his way up from playing Eric in Twilight and is now a filmmaker himself with a few films already. This is his most personal yet from what I've been told and I can understand why. It's one of those movies that covers an issue needing attention with stats right before the credits roll. As important of a topic this is, the movie falls into tropes of an overly dramatic feature we've seen in variations. Let me start out by saying a Justin Chon has potential as a filmmaker. The direction may not be spot on and the same goes for the writing, but he has an eye on what he wanted to invoke. The way it's shot is honestly what carries the whole thing. With it being shot on film, there's an automatic home movie feel to it that puts us right in the spot of the characters. And the cinematography is some of the best we've seen this year. The visuals are rich with color and it's warm to look at. I have but one complaint and that's that the handheld cam can get a little too shaky where it feels like we're watching a scene out of Cloverfield. The acting is really good from Justin Chon and Alicia Vikander. He goes for it giving his best performance yet, though Vikander stole the show for me. Maybe this is because of his character. I wanted to like him and I did to begin with. But as we learn more about him and see his true persona it can be difficult to like or connect with. There are bad decisions made that we know are what make him flawed, but since there's hardly any work to fix them, I didn't care too much for him as it went along. I wanted the overall outcome to be ok for him and his family, but it's difficult to like after some time. There's a character introduced that ends up being a bigger part. Linh Dah Pham does great with her, but her character didn't feel relevant other than a deeper meaning that was supposed to bring out more character. Most of the characters aren't written as well as they should be. What really annoyed me was the classic racist cop. He's an awful character as he should be and a necessary part, but all the dialogue given and how he is written just isn't that good. Since it falls into many tropes, you kind of have to get used to it after a while. There are scenes, mainly the end, where the music swells so loud to get at your emotions. It was a little overkill, but the music is good. And going back to the end, as abrupt as it may be I could understand and get behind it. Blue Bayou needed to find its voice a little more to make a grounded story. It's not bad, but it's another movie this September (and we've had multiple so far) that should've been better. It's alright but not one that I see myself revisiting for years.

I just saw it this afternoon. God! Those ICE people are evil! They are destroying American families and torturing American people! And the police too! It's not just since George Floyd right? The police are abusing and being sadistic all the time! No wonder people call them pigs! God why common people have to suffer from them? Those evil racism and xenophobia pig! I actually thought the movie is gonna stop when he jump to the lake, but the ending is much more better! I just wanna tell them to come to California you know, leave those evil racism and xenophobia state! God they should come to California, at least the guy should come!

A free preview pass and Alicia Vikander attracted me to the movies this evening. The intense acting and generally good filmcraft are strengths. The regional accents and a certain performance of the namesake song are standouts. But there are diverging subplots all over the place, detracting from the main theme. Sometimes the characters do not ring true and are otherwise too unsympathetic. This was made expressly to champion the cause of international adoptees who become deportable because their stateside adopting parents failed to satisfy all the formalities. Their plight is akin to that of the Dreamers. The film comes just when a "fix" in the form of the proposed Adoptee Citizenship Act is pending. To get that enacted is indeed a worthy cause.