Alamo Bay (1985)

Movie takes place in Texas where many Asian immigrants showed up in the late seventies and these "good ole' boys" make a living catching fish and the Vietnamese are doing the same kind of work and taking their business. One man and his daughter hire many of the immigrants to help them and the rednecks take revenge and the town officials turn there back.. it's just racism that is everywhere and still very apparent all over the country.The thing is with me, is that I have seen so many films like this and it offered nothing new to me. The rednecks are mean people who get what they deserve and it was good they did in this film, but its sad knowing there's a lot of that racist garbage going on and few times do the victims get such sweet revenge.Production values are not great here, direction was simple, music was by Ry Cooder and very boring, even excruciating at times, his scores bend hard on that cliché, southern movie music score sound. Ed Harris did a damn good job as the redneck jerk on this film and many of the other actors did well too. I just couldn't suggest this film to anyone, it offered nothing new, and there is no wonder why it is a forgotten film. 3/10 stars

In Alamo Bay on the Texas coast, the local white fishing community feels inundated by Vietnamese refugees and they dislike the "gooks." There seems no end to the irritation they cause. First, they're Catholics instead of proper Christians. Second, they look funny -- except the cute little gals jest awigglin' down the street after school. Third, they speak some barbaric tongue. Fourth, they live according to standards known only in undeveloped, overcrowded countries. (This isn't too well illustrated in the film, but in actuality it probably was true; I say that, having lived with Chinese students in New York and Korean fishermen in Pago Pago.) Fifth, where was I? Sixth, the Vietnamese don't know the formal norms, so they pollute the bay and catch fish, shrimp, and crabs before sunrise and after sundown, which is against the law, and they encroach on traditional family fishing grounds. Seventh, they work like hell, and for low wages.All this vexation adds up and before you know it the rednecks in their caterpillar caps are roughing up some of the small and slender gooks. They're accused of stealing, excluded from other community facilities, chased away from the fishing grounds, and are finally run out of town by a stereotypical Ku Klux Klan. Everybody except the two gooks who operate the fishing boat belonging to Amy Madigan.Madigan's character is a spunky young lady. She's nobody's idea of a bleeding heart but she doesn't displace her anger onto the industrious gooks. (Anger is displaced when it's shifted to an easier target; a man gets chewed out by his boss, comes home and kicks the dog.) And there's a lot of anger in the white community. Shrimping isn't what it used to be. Ed Harris, Shank, has just lost his boat because the bank won't extend his loan. Big Government is sticking its nose into everybody's business. You have to have registration numbers on your boats and all that. The white folks have to comply with these impositions but the gooks persist in ignoring them.In the end there is a shoot out. The shoot out isn't handled with the kind of action and drama we're used to. The movie was directed by Louis Malle, a Frenchman. The pistol shots don't sound like 105 mm. howitzers going off. Nobody uses an ugly gun that sprays lead all over the place like a fire hose gone berserk. The Molotov cocktail doesn't explode in a fireball; it just breaks and spills some burning gasoline over the deck -- promptly extinguished by the timely arrival of the fire department. The gook who is beaten half to death has a face that remains recognizably human, though there's a bit of blood. When a heavy is shot, there is no squibb; he simply clutches his side and rolls over, as he would in a drama from the 1940s.Interesting questions are raised by the tale, which roughly reflects historical conditions around Corpus Christi. The racial prejudice and the displacement of anger aside -- "aside" because the motives are so commonly encountered -- what, exactly, do you do with a "rate buster"? Psychologists have shown that a consistent tendency exists in workers to establish certain norms of production. That is, everybody on the team works at about the same rate; not too slow, not too fast. That way everyone is comfortable and satisfied with the effort he's putting into the task. But what happens when somebody breaks this unwritten rule? Cool Hand Luke did it while his chain gang was shoveling sand over a freshly tarred roadway and it caused The Man With No Eyes to insert the bolt into his rifle. Here, the gooks run roughshod over the unwritten rules. Nobody likes a rate buster. But the question of what to do about them is neatly sidestepped when the Vietnamese are run out of town and the white folks can get back to a more reasonable level of exertion. Still, it remains a question of interest, maybe more than race and displaced anger, which can be overcome by moral evolution. Rate busters, regardless of ethnicity, rearrange the whole task structure. It threatens to shift the emphasis from cooperation to competition.

I really enjoy this movie. I am normally a Horror buff, but there is a great ambiance of the Texas Gulf created. Not to mention wonderful character development. The story is about a young Vietnamese man (Ho Nguyen) who comes to Texas after the war for work. He ends up hitching a ride and begins work shrimping on the Gulf Coast of Texas. He is taken in by the Shrimp business owner's daughter (Amy Madigan). Everything is going well until the pressures of the immigrants over fishing drives Shang (Ed Harris) to lead the Ku Klux Klan to drive out the Vietnamese. The drama continues in a very REAL display. You will be able to find a VHS copy on Amazon or Ebay. This movie SHOULD be released on DVD.

The movie is stilted and slow in today's terms but does give a fairly accurate historical representation of the struggle of the Vietnamese shrimpers versus the KKK in the early eighties. Morris Dees and the newly formed Southern Poverty Law Center came to Kemah and Seabrook to make sure the Klan did not become the ruling class in the Texas Bay Area. The actual story can be found at www.tolerance.org or the southern poverty law center site. Louis Malle (yes he was French) was a great director who was married to actress Candice Bergen. He died of cancer in the late nineties. The movie does show a fledgling actor, Ed Harris, who has gone on to make many successful movies. The script was written by the writer of "Silkwood" which was another docudrama. It is worth watching for the history alone. Shows the pain felt by the locals and the immigrants.