Dragon Chow

Because of a very confusing opening, many people will miss this otherwise charming little film. Dragon Chow opens with a pair of Pakistani men riding a bus home to their refugee hotel. They carry on an animated conversation in Urdu, not a word of which, unfortunately, is subtitled. Only when the pair stop in at the landlord's apartment, and he tells Shezad (Bhasker) that he has a job opening for him, do we begin to realize what's going on here. The landlord, Herder, is operating a cheap labor pipeline from the Third World into West Germany. Shezad and Rashid (Buddy Uzzaman) have requested political asylum here in Hamburg, and now they are trying to make ends meet while awaiting the verdict. Rashid ends up being deported, while Shezad gets a job in a restaurant. Here he strikes up a friendship with Xiao (Ric Young), a Chinese waiter. After quitting the subpar establishment together, the two unlikely friends decide to start up their own restaurant, and the movie really comes into its own as these two strangers in a strange land try to make an enterprising go of it. Overcoming the language barrier, the fact that they are foreigners, and the massive administrative and financial obligations of starting up a new business, the pair launch their Pakistani restaurant...for a brief, successful and intensely proud, moment--before the film's tragic ending. If people could be forewarned to stick with this movie, past the purposely untranslated Urdu, there's a real treat here. Recommended, with the above reservations. (R. Pitman)