I won't slam this film for being a poorly disguised Christian-value morality pusher. I won't knock it for it's 3rd-grade script and monotone actors. I'm not even going to examine the scores of plot-holes and racist inaccuracies present in an obviously NGO-funded and bible- thumper backed waste of space in my BitTorrent stream.
Instead I'd like to point out that this film, supposedly made about Cambodia and "based on real events" has:
a) Not a single Cambodian actor in the entire film
b) Not a single line of dialog that sounds Khmer
c) Not a single actual shot of Cambodia, Siem Reap, or Angkor Wat
d) Not a single shred of present-day reality
This movie will only shock & surprise those whom are easily fooled. The flimsy story-line and cheesy dialog, "I trained my whole life for this!", are enough to make milk curdle. Yeah, we know child trafficking sucks, we know people are working to stop it, but we're not dull enough to believe that it's as black & white as it's poorly portrayed here.
The thing that really gets me is that I saw the three actors, the only white guys in the movie, out together in Soi Cowboy during the making of the film. Really? You're gonna make a movie about how terrible the sex trade is and then go get a 16-year-old lap dance and boom boom when you've punched off the clock?
Scratch what I said above. There was one thing right about this movie, the pedophile go away in the end. That's what happens in 99.999% of the cases, they go back home from their holiday without hassle (incidentally, 19 out of 20 sex trade customers come from the same continent).
I wish filmmakers could stop themselves from making films about a country that they know nothing about and can't even bring themselves to hire someone from that country to help make the movie. It's insulting, demeaning, and racist. But hey, what do I know, Thais, Cambodians, Vietnamese -- heck, even Chinese -- they all look the same and a stupid Western audience won't be able to see or hear the difference, right?
