SIFF: Thoughts on the movie “Missing in America”

On Memorial day I went to a showing of the film “Missing in America”.  It was kind of appropriate to see the movie on that day.  As always I make no promises on that there might be spoilers in this blog entry.  The movie is the story of a Vietnam vet (Danny Glover) living in the wild of the Pacific Northwest.  His life and routine are interrupted when a member of his platoon shows up one day with a pre-teen daughter who is part Vietnamese and part White.  He is dying of lung cancer from exposure to Agent Orange during the war.  He leaves his daughter with Glover.  They both struggle as in getting to know each other.  We meet the in town store owner (Linda Hamilton) who has been giving Glover food at a discounted rate.  Glover takes the food and distributes it to locations in the woods where Vets are living in tents, busses, and caves.  In return for the food they leave Glover chopped wood which he in turn sells in town.  These are Vets that Glover has never met.  His new daughter (Zoe Weizenbaum), if you will, has an idea of throwing a picnic for all of their “neighbors”.  They set out a BBQ and crank the music and wait for Vets to come out of the woods.  They meet a few friendly ones but one that does not talk (Ron Perlman) takes offense to seeing a little Vietnamese girl, who we later learn was disfigured with a girl in Vietnam threw a grenade at him.
I will not give away the end of the movie but the ending made many people in the audience cry.  While I felt there were a few big dead spots in the movie I hope it finds a distributor and gets out for many audiences to see.  The director; Gabrielle Savage Dockterman and the other two co-writers; Nancy L. Babine and Ken Miller were there for Q & A after the movie.  We missed Zoe who was there for the other showing.  Zoe has ties to the Seattle area but she was found for the movie and was living in the Northeast.  Ken Miller who wrote the story that the movie is based off of is from the Seattle area and many of the facts of the movie are based on Vets who did in fact live in the woods out on the peninsula in Washington State.  The film itself was filmed in British Columbia but it looks about the same.  It was interesting on how they got Danny Glover for the lead role.  Glover’s younger brother died of lung cancer brought on from being exposed to Agent Orange after two stints in Vietnam in the war so he wanted to make sure this story was told.  His star power brought in the other actors for this very independent film.  This is one of the films done outside of the mainstream Hollywood that can be successful.  

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