Rom

About a teen who works as a runner for black market lottery draws in Vietnam, Rom starts out quite well, with a palpable sense of propulsive energy and a fascinating setting in the vibrant urban sprawl of the slums of Ho Chi Minh City. It’s a great setup for a movie, and for the first 20 minutes or so, it really sings. But eventually it becomes clear that the plot you’re waiting to kick in is never going to kick in, and in the absence of that, the propulsive energy starts to leak out of the film like air out of a balloon. There’s a lot of good stuff here, but the lack of anything resembling a traditional narrative (the film sort of takes a stab at this with a plot thread involving the protagonist’s missing parents, but that goes nowhere) ultimately makes the film feel purposeless and inert. It’s too bad, because it’s well acted and first-time director Tran Thanh Huy does some solid work (aside from a distracting overuse of dutch angles — practically every shot is askew to a certain extent), but there just isn’t enough here to keep things compelling throughout.

** out of ****