Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Strictly average movie

I like Black Panther, but I didn't like this movie.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Can a teenager find his identity if he's always scraping to locate his next meal? This unusual and extremely exotic coming-of-age film seems to tackle this question amidst the subsistence rice paddies of 1940s Vietnam. The Lu Le is excellent as Kim, a shirtless and angry 15-year-old. His father, Det, taught Kim to play the flute in happier days but now serves mainly to keep him (and his machete) in line. Kim's mother is cold and rejecting. We learn a lot about why at Det's pivotal death-boat scene. Kim's unfolding epiphany is powerful. This psychological struggle takes place in a highly threatening environment. On the human side you have French-backed soldiers demanding high taxes, and local herder-gangsters practicing cut-throat competition, rape, and abduction. Nature is equally brutal. The primitive, unlighted terrain has its attractions but is also hellish with torrential downpours, oceanic floods, and a tremendous amount of mud. I'm glad I caught this on the TV channel of the City University of New York. At least now I understand why they call those beasts "water" buffalo!

OK, let's have a plot summary: Vietnamese dude leads a bunch of buffaloes in search of grass.That's it.(The DVD packagers are going to have a hell of a time selling this one.)But I assure you that the symbolism, the poetry, and the commentary on the conflict of the human condition is absolutely enthralling. You have to be looking for it, though, because it's quite subtle.We are shown a land & a culture of savagery. We travel with rogues, rapists and murderers. Even the lead character is vulnerable to lapses in moral character. But through it all, he maintains the utmost dedication to his buffaloes and to those kind humans whom he encounters along the way. To me, it's one of the most honest portrayals of moral conflict in human beings. True, we are savage and brutal, but there is also honor, if you dig down deep enough.The Vietnamese reverence for water buffaloes is something I never understood, but now I do. Eat your heart out, Francis Ford Coppola (who had a water buffalo slaughtered in "Apocalypse Now" and blamed it on a local tribe. Yeah, right).If you can find a copy of this rare gem, definitely give it a watch. There's a lot more to it than you'd ever expect.

I'm so what not a casual film watcher, meaning movie like spider-man or superman or x-man or maybe even Titanic doesn't really score much of impression to me.This movie, is a somewhat similar to the movie "Legend of the fall" (but of course not that close, but that's the style). The technique of the movie is kind of similar to Green Papaya or "Vertical ray of sun", but it's more on the rural side, more mainstream (a favorite struggle story) rather than a contemporary city life.And yet, this is one of the rarest Vietnamese movie that truly depict what is the society / life look like in 1930, in its fully details.

When I saw this film at the Palm Springs Film Festival I was prepared for a nice slice-of-life movie about a time and place I would never visit in any other way. This stunningly beautiful film delivers that and so much more. Set in Vietnam during the occupation by the French in the 1930's Bufalo Boy tells the story of a teenage boy who becomes a man when he leads his family's only hope for survival, two water buffalo, out of their flooded homeland to forage on higher ground. With this debut, the director combines riveting action/adventure, poignant relationships, powerful performances and excellent photography. He immerses us in a way of life that requires more courage in order to survive one day than most of us will have to summon in a life-time. Like a character with a starring role, the water is always there, always changing, always influencing the lives of those who depend on it to nurture them and fight with it to keep it from destroying them. Out soon in DVD but well worth the effort to see it on a large screen if you can.