The film traces the story of a family's struggle for survival in the aftermath of the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, to North Vietnam's communist regime. After her South Vietnamese Army husband Long, is imprisoned in a North Vietnamese re-education camp, Mai, her son Lai, and her mother-in-law escape Vietnam by boat in the hopes of starting a new life in Southern California. Believing his family is dead, Long gives up in the face of brutal conditions, while Mai struggles to keep her family from crumbling under the pressures of life in a new country. When Long learns his family is alive in America, he is reinvigorated and decides he must join them at any cost.
The film was received with critical acclaim. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, it received a 92% rating, with the consensus being that "Ham Tran's ambitious film proves to be extremely powerful due to stunning photography and passionate performances" and is currently ranked 27th in the Top 100 Best Movies of 2007.[1] Matt Zoller Seitz of The New York Times remarked that the director "achieves the impossible" and called it a "tearjerker".[2]Los Angeles Times called it a "superbly wrought saga of loss and survival" and "an example of sophisticated, impassioned filmmaking involving mainly people who lived through the harrowing experiences so unsparingly depicted".[3] Bruce Newman of The Mercury News called it "heartbreaking" and gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars.[4] Russell Edwards from Variety said it "deserves to be seen by a wider commercial audience" and is "frequently enthralling".[5]New York magazine had a negative review of the film, saying that it has "several powerful sequences" but "never quite come[s] alive".[6] Bill White of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was even more critical, suggesting that "this Journey doesn't know where it's going", criticizing the "careless cinematography" and "clumsy stag[ing]".[7]
Response from Vietnamese diaspora
An early cut of the film was screened in April 2005 in sold-out one-day-only showings in Little Saigon, Washington, D.C., and San Jose to commemorate the 30 year anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. The film was highly praised by the Vietnamese diaspora as an accurate presentation of the experiences that many Vietnamese people had to go through.[8][9][10][11] In the process of making the film, the director interviewed more than 400 former boat people, some of whom are cast in the film even though they are not professional actors.[10]
The OC Weekly, an alternative weekly in Orange County, California, published two reviews of the film. The first and longer review was written by R. Scott Moxley, praised the director for "bring[ing] to life the true South Vietnamese experience".[24] The second and much shorter review was published almost a year later, written by Scott Foundas. In his review, Foundas praised the film for being "one of the few movies to depict Vietnam and its aftermath through the eyes of the Vietnamese" but ultimately characterized it as "old-fashioned and even phony".[25] This conclusion brought a flurry of letters to the paper, most disagreeing with Foundas and taking offense at his "phony" characterization,[26][27] prompting Foundas to clarify his review, claiming that he was "by no means suggesting that the history depicted by the movie didn't happen, but rather that matters were not nearly as black-and-white as Mr. Tran makes them seem".[28]
Following the negative ratings above, in Vietnam, where the film was neither filmed nor shown officially, unlicensed copies were so prevalent that the government issued orders to confiscate all DVD copies.[29] The film was banned for its "reactionary" content. The government consider the film "defamation" and a "distortion" of its policy of sending people to re-education camps after 1975. The film was considered such a threat that the Ministry of Public Security's newspaper Công an Nhân dân featured an article warning about the "poisonous film" and claiming that "most overseas Vietnamese are indifferent or critical of this movie".[30] The article also quoted Foundas and several random people in online message boards to bolster its claim.[31]
In the opening weekend, it played in packed theaters, generating $87,442 on just four screens, giving the film the largest per theater average for that weekend ($21,861).[32]
As of July 16, the film has grossed over $630,000, despite a limited release that never exceeded fourteen theaters at a time.[33]
Home media release
The 2-disc DVD was released on October 31, 2007, which includes a 38-minute The Making of Journey from the Fall, a 135-minute roundtable discussion/commentary with cast and crew, a deleted scene and alternate ending, as well as original theatrical trailer and TV spots.
A Blu-ray version of the film was released on July 9, 2024 by Whole Grain Pictures.[34]
