The Beautiful Country Reviews

Although one desperately wants to like this well-meaning film, it ultimately evokes tedium.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

While Damien Nguyen is more than capable as an actor, the character is a little dull, perhaps a bit one-sided.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

The moments of genuine feeling get wind-tossed on a sea of hard sell.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

This ambitious drama grapples with big themes -- identity, family, East-West conflict - but loses itself in melodrama, caricature and narrative missteps.

| Original Score: 2.5/4

At times, the movie feels like a manufactured Asian Chocolat, which drives the label 'art house movie' even further into mainstream banality.

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A poorly-written melodrama which at times borders on the tedious

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Beauty amidst ugliness and inequity is the territory of Moland's wrenching saga of one young man's journey to America.

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A well-intentioned but not entirely successful blend of tragic melodrama, social-issue expose and compassionate portraiture...

| Original Score: '2.5/4'

An ambitious movie made on a modest budget, its intention is better than its execution.

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A trite and troubled script makes it more a visual tirade than an engaging odyssey.

Full Review | Original Score: C+

The subject is compelling but the story is very, very slow.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

The storytelling is problematic -- Binh seems uncannily able to find the right people at the right time -- and the performances uneven.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

If the road to hell really is paved with good intentions, cliches and stock characters are the asphalt.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

The Beautiful Country provides a panorama without insight.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5

What it badly needs is Terrell Owens; in other words, a reason to pay attention.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

There's little said about what is driving Binh on this journey -- and without that, the trip is nearly as hard on audiences as it is on him.

| Original Score: 2/4

Some of the plotting borders on ludicrous, and newcomer Nguyen is pretty much charisma-free.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

...tells what could have been a bathetic story with persuasive compassion, admirable restraint and a painterly precision

Full Review | Original Score: A-

The culminating shot in this graceful tale of Binh -- the Vietnamese son of a U.S. soldier -- reminds the viewer one final time how methodically compassionate Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland's film has been from lovely start to loving end.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland lays on the pathos with a trowel, but the movie is carried by Nguyen's quiet competence.

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