Ra Choi, directed by Michael Frank 2005.
Well not to go overboard with praise, I'm moving from my favorite film so far in the festival to by far my least favorite film. In reality it also happens that I saw them in this order as well, so my day began with the amazing Adam's Apples and ended with a bad taste in my mouth that goes by the name of Ra Choi.
More than likely my review of this film could be easily filtered down to one sentence. Just watch Kids, its easy to rent and a far sight better than this knock off. Ra Choi follows a group of kids, some with parents, some without, who deal and use drugs, steal and generally participate in the many facets of the criminal world. Sound familiar?
You know one, if not some of the kids will die. Its just a matter of who and when. You know some will end up in jail. Its just a matter of who and when. About the only original aspect of this film is that it is focused on vietnamese kids here in Sydney. It turns out that this is not nearly enough to salvage a completely uninspired directorial effort by Michael Frank. Its unfortunate because some of the actors and actresses show some promise but instead they simply come across as painfully amatuer.
M. Frank also turns to simply unbelievable and seemingly out of touch character traits for some of his kids. In particular one kid who is probably around 12-14 years old is obsessed with playing with plastic farm animals.....in a manner that is far more suitable to a 4-5 year old boy. Perhaps the director was trying to show that the kids surroundings were so dibilating that he hadn't even developed beyond the state of a 5 year old but you'd really have to stretch to argue that.
I honestly can't think of one reason to recommend that anyone see this film, and there aren't many films I can say that about.
*One Star
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