Although tender and touching, the movie would have benefited from a little more dramatic tension and some more editing.
Green Dragon (2002)
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Reviews Counted:28
Fresh:17
Rotten:11
Average Rating:5.9/10
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for some disturbing situations, nudity and language
Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:May 1, 2002 Limited
Synopsis: 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... 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. [More]
Starring: Don Duong, Patrick Swayze, Forest Whitaker, Kieu Chinh
Starring: Don Duong, Patrick Swayze, Forest Whitaker, Kieu Chinh, Hiep Thi Le, Kathleen Luong, Billinjer Tran
Director: Timothy Linh Bui
Director: Timothy Linh Bui
Screenwriter: Timothy Linh Bui, Tony Bui
Producer: Tony Bui, Tajamika Paxton, Elie Samaha, Andrew Stevens
Composer: Michael Danna, Jeff Danna
Studio: Silver Nitrate Films
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Reviews for Green Dragon
The somber pacing and lack of dramatic fireworks make Green Dragon seem more like medicine than entertainment.
In the end, the film feels homogenized and a bit contrived, as if we're looking back at a tattered and ugly past with rose-tinted glasses.
Begins like a docu-drama but builds its multi-character story with a flourish.
In the telling of a story largely untold, Bui chooses to produce something that is ultimately suspiciously familiar.
A gushy episode of "M*A*S*H" only this time from an Asian perspective.
Often moving and explores the discomfort inherent in the contacts between the American 'hosts' and their 'guests.'
A gracious, eloquent film that by its end offers a ray of hope to the refugees able to look ahead and resist living in a past forever lost.
Green Dragon falls prey to some threadbare Hollywood conventions, but otherwise maintains a high level of maturity and emotion as it examines the lives of Vietnamese refugees entering America in 1975.
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