GREEN DRAGON takes place during the close of the Vietnam War, at Camp Pendleton, a US military base in California that was a temporary home to thousands of South Vietnamese refugees. Patrick Swayze plays the concerned commander who befriends English-speaking refugee Tai Tran (Don Duong)... [More]

GREEN DRAGON takes place during the close of the Vietnam War, at Camp Pendleton, a US military base in California that was a temporary home to thousands of South Vietnamese refugees. Patrick Swayze plays the concerned commander who befriends English-speaking refugee Tai Tran (Don Duong) and hires him as camp manager. His little nephew Minh (Trung Nguyen) and niece Anh (Jennifer Tran) are anxiously awaiting the arrival of their mother, who was left behind during the evacuation. Fortunately, Minh finds a friend in the camp cook (Forest Whitaker), and together they paint a colorful mural on the kitchen wall. Meanwhile, another refugee, Duc (Billinjer Tran), tries hard to embrace the American way of life, but finds heartbreak when he discovers his lost love (Kathleen Luong) is also at the camp, now the second wife of another man. Time passes and everyone listens to the fall of Saigon over the radio while waiting to be assimilated, like it or not, into their strange new homeland. Directed by Timothy Linh Bui, this is a stately, mournful series of vignettes that brings healing attention to an aspect of the Vietnam War some may have forgotten. [Less]