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Cyclo
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List Price: $19.95
Our Price: $17.99
Your Save: $ 1.96 ( 10% )
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Manufacturer: New Yorker Video
Starring: Le Van Loc, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Tran Nu Yên-Khê, Nhu Quynh Nguyen, Hoang Phuc Nguyen
Directed By: Anh Hung Tran
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9781567303186
Format: Anamorphic
ISBN: 1567303188
Label: New Yorker Video
Manufacturer: New Yorker Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: New Yorker Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2004-02-03
Running Time: 123
Studio: New Yorker Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1996-08-02
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Editorial Reviews:
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In the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, a young cyclo (pedicab driver) transports anonymous passengers through the teeming streets, trying to eke out a meager living for his two sisters and elderly grandfather. When his bicycle is stolen by a local gang, he descends into the gruesome underbelly of this corrupt and violent city. Seduced by easy money, the Cyclo is swept deeper into the crime ring lead by the quietly charismatic Poet (Tony Leung of CHUNGKING EXPRESS and BULLET IN THE HEAD). 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.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Funny Side of Poverty, Despair, Prostitution and Creepy Little Kids
Comment: This movie was playing at a local film festival and I almost didn't go. I mean I had heard good things about it, but the description seemed a little too much like Salaam Bombay (Widescreen Special Edition). You got the innocent kid trying to get money to go back to his village. The older sister being led into prostitution and the pimp that is both a cause of grief and a product of his society. My girlfriend at the time didn't want to see it and usually I follow her lead in terms of dreary melodramas but for some reason we went.
And it was like nothing we thought it'd be. For one thing, the pimp doesn't do much but smoke. Every scene he's in, he's smoking. Sometimes he's reciting poetry. In one scene he's obviously stabbed a guy, only you don't see the stabbing. You just see him hovering around the guy, smoking. I joked that Jet Li didn't do much in War (Widescreen Edition) beyond "Looking-Really-Cool-in-a-Suit-Fu" but Tony Leung beats Jet Li hands down in that particular martial art. Then you got the prostitute. She's the luckiest prostitute in the world as almost all of her tricks are specialty tricks. One wants to paint her toenails. Another one watches her urinate.
And then there's the kid. In Salaam Bombay, he's innocence personified. In this movie, he's creepy Damien Thorne kid. He's what Patton Oswalt wanted out of Anakin in Star Wars - Episode I, The Phantom Menace (Widescreen Edition) in that great comic bit "I want to go back in time and smash George Lucas over the head with a shovel." Sure, he's lost his cyclo and that's all sad, but he's also sniffing glue and painting himself blue. And when he finds the kid that stole his cyclo, it's not pretty.
It's like the director saw Salaam Bombay and found the tedious melodrama part silly and decided to make a movie about pimps and prostitutes and children where they weren't one dimensional sermons about the big bad city. They aren't any more realistic but they are definitely much more interesting.
All in all, a very creepy movie. The tag of "innocence lost" is a misnomer since there's really not much innocence involved in this movie (well maybe the pimp. He seems a trifle too starry eyed. He's even more sweet and goodly hearted than the pimp in Hustle & Flow (Widescreen Edition).
Customer Rating:
Summary: After LOS OLVIDADOS and before CITY OF GOD there was CYCLO.
Comment: Reminiscent of Bunuel's LOS OLVIDADOS and NAZARIN, CYCLO is filled to overflowing with negative images...even the singers in the open air restaurant are both missing a leg.
Le Van Loc is a malnourished young man who operates a bicycle taxi to help support his two sisters and aging grandfather, who all also work. When his bicycle is stolen he is forced to do odd jobs to pay off his debt to the Boss Lady. His life, which was already [...], is now flushed straight down into the gurgling bowels of Hell.
Your average moviegoer will probably be turned off by the violence, cruelty to animals and bleak outlook, but more serious film lovers will appreciate the amazing camerawork, the poetic flow of the story and the outstanding performances by everyone (including Tony Leung) and especially Le Van Loc, who in his one and only film appearance has outdone Will Smith's entire career. "Welcome to erff."
Customer Rating:
Summary: Tran Anh Hùng's vision of Hell on earth.
Comment: Tran Anh Hùng is a Vietnamese French film director. He received an Oscar nomination for his first film The Scent of Green Papaya (1993), and received critical acclaim for his followup Cyclo (XÃch lô) (1995). Reminscent of Bicycle Thieves with the intensity of Taxi Driver, Cyclo is set in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), and tells the story of a young cyclo driver, "Cyclo" (Le Van Loc), who is forced into working for a gang after his bicycle taxi cycle is stolen. His sister (the beautiful star of The Scent of Green Papaya) also becomes a slave to the gang and is forced to work a prostitute. An emotionally-conflicted, brooding gang leader, known as "the Poet" (Tony Leung), develops an interest in the sister, but continues to sell her out to other men. The brother and sister are drawn into the depths of what can only be described as hell on earth before finding their ways out again. While Hung's vision of modern-day Vietnam is equally bleak and hallucinogenic, his film is nothing less than visionary. The film features the song "Creep" by Radiohead, which becomes the score for one of the most memorable scenes in the film. Highly recommended.
G. Merritt
Customer Rating:
Summary: Early 50's Roy Rogers
Comment: I should begin by stating that I lived and worked in Saigon for 8 years
in the 90's. My experience will therefore be different from many other
viewers.
The film effectively conveys the kinetic pace of Saigon, especially in
the later 90's, and the sense, if not the details, of how the low level,
cyclo based,"mob" exists and operates.
While at times it was dead on, at other times it portrayed things that
were culturaly ludicrous. Cyclo's don't have clean white t-shirts, prostitutes don't dance in evening gowns, and nobody would have
access to or wear a handcuff. There were many other little things that
didn't fit, from Saigon idioms/accent to relationships and settings.
So while I found the film disconcerting, like trying to use Roy Rogers
to portray the American West, for those unfimailiar with Vietnam it
is an idealized starting point and could be of some interest.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Elegy for Elegies
Comment: Tran Anh Hung seems to have developed some edge. Gone is the elegy to and organic and pastoral and with Cyclo we are transported to grittier space - that space where we have lost our innocence. The causeways of Ho Chi Minh City are a metaphor for that sense loss of innocence in Cyclo. From the director of The Scent of Green Papaya gone is the pastoral elegy we have grown to love. In a way it is, it a way it is not a departure from the aesthetic lyricism of both The Scent of Green Papaya and The Vertical Ray of the Sun. The movie is violent, disjointed, convoluted, and it is nothing short of a representation of the strong, seductive pull of desperation.
According to this rendition in Vietnam, a cyclo is a pedicab driver. A crucial member of society - the one that keeps the metropolis moving, the cyclo inhabits the lowest levels of the social order. The cyclo not only endures the horrendous physical deterioration for miniscule pay but he also fears for his life being threatened by gangs and turf wars. In Tran's multifaceted movie the protagonist is an 18-year-old never do well, acted by Le Van Loc. The cyclo loses both parents and finds himself subject to the whims of the Madam, the underworld boss lady acted by Nguyen Nhu Quynh. Almost as if on purpose - in an effort to trap him, the cyclo's bicycle is stolen. In order to pay back the loss, the Madam forces him to work - with of all people Tony Leung Chiu Wai of Wong Kar-wai fame - who plays the Poet, making the cyclo her prisoner. A sympathetic thug, the Poet recites his poetry in voice-over. The Poet, although he does not really say much throughout the movie is a pivotal character who introduces the cyclo to the foundations of crime. The Poet is also, ironically, the lover of the cyclo's sister - the stunning Tran Nu Yen-Khe.
In an effort to effect some form of analysis, Cyclo is narrated though the perspective of a young man's trying to survive the mean streets of Ho Chi Minh City. Tran builds - or tries to build - a sense of mystery. I think it is amazing, this departure, the movie is less lyrical, less pastoral - we are subjected to a dreamscape of hallucinatory imagery and crisp editing reminiscent of Wong Kar-wai. The impact is a surrealism that we have not seem before - in a way showing us that Tran has range and is willing to take risk. Tran allows his camera from time to time to do what he does best - long master shots - we escape the slatted doors and look over the battered buildings unfinished edges into at the frenzied and apathetic metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City. It's a powerful tool for portraying the cyclo's segregation and sense of anomie. Tran once again goes inside the man's mind and we his sordid world through his perspective. Once again, like The Scent of Green Papaya - we hear the ever present looming sounds of helicopter propellers - giving the mean street an even greater edge. Tran's dystopia is unnerving, edgy, and risky yet somehow we know we are watching a deeply metaphoric Tran film.
Disturbingly, towards the finale, the cyclo begins to feel a sense of empowerment. He discovers the use of a handgun. There was hidden social commentary all over the place. The film includes an exploration of the confluence of drugs, liquor, easy money, and crime that permeated most of the scenes including the cyclo. The cyclo pulls a pseudo Apocalypse Now scene as he slathers blue paint on himself and in Tran form destroys the fish tank. My only hope is that he takes care of the animals in these movies the way Kim Ki-duk does with his players. My sense is that the cyclo's descent to hell is paved in Krishna blue rather than the cliché blood red. For certain - what with The Scent of Green Papaya and The Vertical Ray of the Sun, Tran has a penchant for at time graphic but more time subtle imagery, even when his meanings are ambiguous. As mentioned previously, Cyclo is a departure from the lyrical The Scent of Green Papaya as well as The Vertical Ray of the Sun. Think of it as sign of Tran's spirit of adventure and faith in his audience's aptitude to bend to the multifaceted, psychologically difficult films he produces.
Miguel Llora
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