"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.
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