Green Dragon

From Tim and Tony Bui, the Vietnamese filmmakers behind the lovely and heartrending Three Seasons, this poignant film about Vietnamese refugees detained at the U.S.'s Camp Pendleton before the fall of Saigon in 1975 stars Patrick Swayze as Jim Lance, the compassionate camp commander who befriends several of his charges, including a young boy named Minh (Trung Nguyen), who is waiting in vain for his lost mother, and the child's uncle, Tai Tran (Don Duong), who serves as Lance's liaison with the émigrés. As the camp cook, Forest Whitaker also takes a shine to Minh, allowing their mutual love of comics and artwork to bridge a language gap. Beautifully shot and acted, though perhaps just a bit too dramatically restrained, this fell-through-the-cracks sleeper is recommended. (T. Rich)