Review: Blue Bayou

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

Justin Chon's "Blue Bayou" may be short on subtlety, but it's long on emotional impact in its tale of American injustice. The film opens with a powerful scene in which Antonio (Chon, who's also the lead in the film) is answering questions at a job interview. He's asked where he's from, and his answer is Baton Rouge (the film is set in New Orleans). But no, the interviewer is interested in where he's from, which, of course, is Korea, although he was adopted by an American family at age 3 and never saw his Korean mother again. When his past criminal record - for stealing motorcycles - is brought up, he knows he's not getting a job with this particular mechanic, who dismisses him with particular unkindness.

Antonio is helping to raise a young girl named Jessie (Sydney Kowalske), who's not his but the daughter of his wife, Kathy (Alicia Vikander), although for all extents and purposes he's her father. She recognizes him as such, and not her police officer father, Ace (Mark O'Brien), who routinely harasses Kathy for not allowing him to see his daughter. He left them years before and now wants privileges to which he doesn't appear entitled.

Antonio works as a tattoo artist and is a pretty responsible guy. It's obvious that he's a good father to Jessie, and early in the film we learn he and Kathy have another child on the way. During an argument at a grocery store, Ace shows up with his racist partner (Emory Cohen), who instigates a fight with Antonio and arrests him. Before Kathy knows what's going on, Antonio has been turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, despite his having a tattoo customer pal in that agency and the fact that he has been in the United States since he was young.

The film follows Antonio and Kathy as they attempt to navigate the legal system with a well-meaning, but not particularly effective, lawyer (Vondie Curtis-Hall), and Antonio considers going back to earning money through some illegal means to pay the lawyer's fees. Also, Antonio is called upon to seek out his adoptive mother to act as a character witness, although there's some apparent history there that he doesn't want to revisit.

Meanwhile, there's a subplot involving Antonio's friendship with a cancer-stricken Vietnamese woman named Parker (Linh Dan Pham), and in a lesser movie their relationship might have gone in an unnecessary direction or simply been fodder for tear jerking scenes, although there are certainly a few of those. Instead, these scenes are among the most compelling in the film, especially since Dan Pham brings such humanity to the character, rather than making Parker a walking cliche.

At times, "Blue Bayou" lays it on a little thick. Cohen's racist cop is over the top - and while believable in the depths of his cruelty, the legal conundrum for which he sets him self up late in the film is, perhaps, a bit of a stretch. There's also an extended airport farewell sequence that is powerful, but dragged on a little too long and a bit heavy on the melodrama. 

But, ultimately, "Blue Bayou" is a compelling character study that hits home in its depiction of modern America as the self-described land of the free, but where draconian bureaucracy usually dwarfs decency, common sense or fairness when it comes to those who have made their way here from other lands, sometimes with no say in the matter. The film may not be subtle, but it's effective.