First Hit: Although a mediocre film, the point it makes about child sex trafficking is brave and commendable.
I don’t know of any films that take on this sordid subject, therefore on this alone it deserve points. The best acting done in this film is by Thuy Nguyen who plays Holly.
Holly has been sold into the Cambodian sex trade by her Vietnamese parents. They did this for survival. Patrick (Ron Livingston) happens across this girl while his motorcycle is getting fixed. He job, besides losing at card games, is to find artifacts for Freddie (Chris Penn) who seems to be a fat cat artifacts dealer Cambodia.
Patrick notices that Holly is a house made but the madame wants her to be a hooker. However, she isn’t like the other boom boom (hookers) girls by her moodiness and that she doesn’t mix with the other older girls. Patrick befriends her by buying her some food.
A German attorney Klaus (Udo Kier), who hangs around the brothel makes a couple of snide comments that Patrick likes his girls young. This pisses Patrick off and makes him more determined to stand his moral ground and save this girl.
Patrick attempts to create an honest friendship with Holly because she, like him, is stubborn and there is a mutual respect for each other. Holly runs away from her madam multiple times and gets caught and sold again. Patrick tries to find her and save her from this life and solicits advice from a woman who runs an organization that tries to save these girls.
This is a story about one man’s attempt to save just one girl.
Besides the Thuy’s acting some of the scenes are dead on their mark for realism. Specifically there is one scene where one young boy drags Patrick off to see baby and is confronted with a man selling his extremely young girls for “yum yum, no boom boom.”
In another scene where Holly is searching through a dump for bottles was very realistic and it happens in many poor sections of Asia.
Overall: This is a commendable film for taking on this extremely difficult subject but the story line could have been better written and the acting, by the adults, could have been stronger.