by RICHARD ALAN DUNKLE

Rated: Not yet rated as of print date
Running Time: 2 hr 15 mins
Writer/Director: Ham Tran
Producer: Lam Nguyen
Cast: Kieu Chinh, Long Nguyen, Diem Lien, Nguyen Thai Nguyen, Khanh Doan, Cat Ly and Jayvee Mai The Hiep

April 30, 1975—The fall of Saigon. For many in the United States, it was considered the end of the war. But for those living in Viet Nam itself, it was the beginning of a very different battle—the fight for survival.

Writer/Director Ham Tran’s Journey from the Fall captures the harrowing experience of one family’s retreat from all that they have known with brutal honesty and integrity. As Long Nguyeãn chooses to stay in Viet Nam and fight for his beloved country, his wife, Mai, escapes with her son and mother-in-law aboard a tiny fishing boat bound for America.

Dedicated to the millions of boat people and survivors of the communist re-education camps, Tran’s dramatic portrayal of “post-war” Viet Nam is unique to Hollywood in that it shows the war not from the United States’ perspective, but from those actually suffering the after-effects of a destructive civil war. Perhaps benefited by a budget entirely financed by Vietnamese American businessmen, this film successfully sheds light on a historical event overlooked until now by Tinseltown’s biased titans.

Featuring a cast whose families actually fled Viet Nam, the trueness of these experiences is evident as ex-prisoners turned actors play their own jailors on screen. When Long Nguyen (Long Nguyen) is captured and imprisoned at a re-education camp, the proud soldier has little hope left to live for—his family’s fate uncertain, the man faces a life-time of torture and abuse.

Aboard the tiny boat where Mai (Diem Lien) and her family have been packed like sardines among 50 or more fellow refugees, an outbreak of sickness threatens the very survival of Mai’s son, Lai (Nguyen Thai Nguyen), as his grandmother (Kieu Chinh) struggles to face the loss of her own son. The journey to freedom is a precocious one and, when the boat is raided by pirates mid-way through its journey, audiences will have a hard time accepting the reality of the atrocities the passengers endure.

But endure they do and it is not long before we find Mai, Lai and Grandmother successfully escaped to California where life is anything but easy. As Mai agonizes over the loss of her husband and the abuse she suffered aboard the boat, she alienates Lai who becomes a loner at school and lands himself in disciplinary trouble. It is Grandmother who dares to instill hope in our survivors as she encourage Lai to write to his father every day, claiming her son will return to them one day.

Back in Viet Nam, Long receives word that his family may still be alive, giving him the hope he needs to formulate a seemingly impossible plan of escape with his fellow prisoner, Thanh (Jayvee Mai The Hiep). When a battle erupts nearby, Long and Thanh use the distraction to escape into the woods and begin their blood-pumping race for survival as their custodians give chase.

But while hope may be the theme of this compelling drama, so is truth. Don’t expect a happy-go-lucky ending with Lai and Long playing football in the backyard. Tran avoids the Hollywood happy endings cliché and focuses on the truth—that of the several hundred thousand refugees to flee Viet Nam, only 130,000 ever made it to the United States.

Journey from the Fall is a must-see remembrance of the past. The dedication to scenic design shines through with the realism of the re-education camps—from cells to working fields to lynching poles in the terrifying torture gardens. The brutality of the environment sends chilling images of the Holocaust to mind. In fact, the film’s billing as being “to the Vietnamese community what Schindler’s List is to the Jewish community” seems true to its word, and the personal commitment by cast and crew to the successful realization of Tran and producer Lam Nguyen’s vision is undeniably apparent.

The acting is truly inspired as each adult figure in young Lai’s life seeks to shelter him from the truth of his past. Kieu Chinh’s portrayal of the family matriarch looking after Lai while his mother works is pitch perfect, especially the indignation that comes out when Mai tries to take a more active role in Lai’s upbringing. The best scenes are those involving Nguyen Thai Nguyen, a talented actor in his own right who becomes the emotional core among an ensemble of brilliant actors.

Journey from the Fall is a well-conceived, successfully executed drama about the after effects of one of the darkest and most misunderstood periods in world history. The parallels between this story and events unfolding on the world stage today are ironically timely and thoroughly undeniable. Audiences should not leave the theater without an enlightened outlook on the lessons of time as Journey from the Fall shows us the repercussions of war—both past, present and future.

Journey from the Fall opens March 30, 2007, with a limited release March 23 in New York and Los Angeles.