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Buffalo Boy
Global Film Initiative

Buffalo Boy reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 72 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.2 out of 10
based on 4 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 9 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Le The Lu, Nguyen Thi Kieu Trinh, Nguyen Huu Thanh, Kra Zan Sram, Truong Van Be, Nguyen Anh Hoa, Thi Tham, and Vo Hoang Nhan

Set in southern Vietnam, this powerful coming-of-age tale is a richly textured reflection on the rhythms of daily life. The flooded landscape serves as backdrop for the mythic story of a relationship between a father and son, the cycles of life, and the inescapable flow of all things. (MOMA)


GENRE(S): Drama  |  Foreign  
WRITTEN BY: Minh Nguyen-Vo
Nam Son (short story collection Scent of the Ca Mau Forest)
 
DIRECTED BY: Minh Nguyen-Vo  
RELEASE DATE: Theatrical: March 11, 2005 
RUNNING TIME: 102 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: Vietnam / Belgium / France 
LANGUAGE(S): Vietnamese (with English subtitles) 

Original title "Mua len trau"

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

80
The New York Times Manohla Dargis
One of the strengths of Mr. Nguyen-Vo's film is that despite the overwhelming physical beauty of the landscape and the simplicity of his characters, he doesn't succumb to such aerated thinking. The world in Buffalo Boy" is filled with wonder, but it is a world also filled with real desire, real death, not abstractions.
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70
Variety Derek Elley
Sports a stronger narrative spine than is usual in Vietnamese rural dramas and a less fragile tone in its deployment of landscape and character.
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70
TV Guide Ken Fox
Despite the exotic locale, this is a coming-of-age tale that should be familiar to anyone raised on the tales of Jack London or Robert Louis Stevenson.
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70
Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
The elegiac tone here isn't set just by nostalgia for a vanished lifestyle: bereavement, lost love, and the ever present floodwaters add poignancy to the elliptical story, whose characters float in and out unbidden, and sometimes unexplained.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 8.2 (out of 10) based on 9 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Marta B. gave it a9:
A story filled with quiet power, beautifully shot and acted. The images lingered in my mind long after the film ended. Despite the tiny budget, the execution of the film is so assured, it's hard to believe that this is the director's first film. Hope to see more from him.

Tony T. gave it a9:
This is a best Vietnamese I ever saw. This have brought me back to my country, my youth and it seems like I have found something I had lost for a long time.

Maximilien H. gave it an8:
The person who did the English subtitle should be fired. The most important sentence at the end that sums up the entire story was wrongly translated.

Peggy G. gave it a7:
This movie was excellently done for a first movie for the director/screenwriter. it was'nt boring like most foreign films.

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