A tragic tale of an Asian youth’s gang life in South East Los Angeles, set during the mid 80’s to the early 90s.

I’m not sure the movie ever went into general release in the theaters. It was released in 2008. Some scenes show graphic violence, and the language is a little salty from time to time. There was only one little sex scene showing no real nudity.

Genre: Drama

Cast: Feodor Chin, David Huynh, Ken Choi, Shannon Dang, Aljarreau Galang, Kenzo Lee, Tzi Ma, Ron Yuan, Christina Stacey, Dana Lee, Janet Linn, Ryan Andres, Meng Wei,     Peter Cho

Director: Juwan Chung

We rented this movie on DVD. This was a very interesting movie. It showed the dark side of gangs in general, and specifically within the Asian community, but it is not an Asian film. It really was more around the whole theme of how gang members come to be.

The movie uses the classic construct of jumping back and forth between the past the present to tell the story. I’m OK with this approach, but it got a little chaotic in this movie. The interesting part is, the Director, Chung, managed to have me both rooting for Huynh’s Baby, while at the same time questioning his choices. This is hard to accomplish, but the writers and director did a great job of it in this film.

It also speaks clearly to how we wind up with kids in gangs. It’s not hard when their parents and other positive influences are absent, I’d definitely recommend the film.