Cyclo
by Anh Hung Tran

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Movie Reviews of Cyclo

Movie Review: Dark & depressing
Summary: 1 Stars

Summary of Cyclo

Unbeknown to the Cyclo, his older sister (the exquisite star of THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA) has also been mesmerized by the brooding Poet and turns to prostitution to please him. Director Tran Anh Hung, whose brilliant debut THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA established him as a master visualist, fuses the neorealist style of THE BICYCLE THIEF with the kinetic energy of TAXI DRIVER in this gritty tale of innocence lost in the urban jungle of Vietnam.

Cyclo is a survey of a society in decay, in which conventional plotting gives way to a series of enigmatic episodes and haunting observations. There are two main characters: Cyclo (Le Van Loc) is a poor urban teenager who scratches out a living operating a bicycle taxi in the murderous city traffic; the Poet (Hong Kong star Tony Leung) is the son of an upper-class family who has depressively drifted into pimping and fencing--wartime rackets still thriving in the new Vietnam.

Images of appalling violence are played against backgrounds of banal, everyday bustle--a buzzing flow of meaningless, insectlike activity. Hung's vision may be dispiritingly bleak, but his filmmaking is vivid and inventive. Each shot is distinguished by a particular quality of lighting, framing, or texture that lifts it out of the ordinary and into the realm of the strange, ravishing, and insinuating. --Dave Kehr

Art House & International DVD Video

• Drama
• Mystery & Suspense