Land of Plenty

This is my maiden foray into the Singapore International Film Festival (SIFF), and my first review of a film featured in the SIFF.

The film tells a story of Lana, who is going to LA after her mother passed away, in search of her uncle. She has been travelling the world with her missionary father, and her last place of stay had been Tel Aviv. While we are shown the glistening skyline of LA, we are soon shown the poverty zone, and how Lana feels about leaving one warzone into another, that the war against poverty is not so much different from the world she had left.

Her uncle Paul, a Vietnam war veteran exposed to the infamous Agent Orange, is now a self-possessed vigilante, playing his overly zealous part in homeland security, rigging his van into a one-stop travelling security surveillance van. (Heck, even his handphone ringtone is the national anthem!) He randomly tails people deemed suspicious to him, and things get interesting when a man of Arab descent is spotted by him buying boxes of chemicals (the irony of making a dirty bomb from a cleaning agent) and later on, being gunned down by unknown suspects.

To reach out to Paul, Lana had to play along at times, to get Paul to open up to her, as their initial meeting isn't really cordial, and it is of course difficult to strike up family conversation with relatives you have hardly seen all this while. But things take a turn when Paul finally wakes up to reality, and his futile investigative effort all comes crashing down for him.

While there is little drastic character development, it is the subtle character representation that is key in this film. Paul represents the "ra-ra america", those who are bent on protecting the homeland at all costs, those who are inept in collecting facts (yeah, there's a dumpster diving scene which rocked) and making decisions based on faulty intelligence. Lana, on the other hand, represents the rest of the world. The compassionate world, reaching out to diversity and trying their best in understanding this difference. It is no surprise that the filmmakers showcase the different attitudes that these 2 characters exude towards a Pakistani whom they meet towards the end.

Good music is peppered throughout the movie, and I always appreciate films that introduce appropriate tunes for each scene that punctuates the entire atmosphere beautifully (Think Cameron Crowe movies). And one poignant line in the film stuck to me as the film begins in LA and ends in Ground Zero, NY - if we can hear the 3000 souls asking us not to use their name in vain, as an excuse to kill more people.

For those in Singapore who wish to catch this film, I don't think there is a repeat screening, so you might have to catch it on discs. And by the way, the lead actress looks like a cross between Audrey Tautou and Liv Tyler - so there.