The sub-sub-genre of Vietnamese-American crime dramas is a small pigeonhole indeed. It would seem that filmmaker Sing J. Lee’s The Accidental Getaway Driver—a Directing Award winner at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival just now getting its first run theatrical debut—has the field pretty much to itself.
Vietnamese immigrant senior Long Ma (TV and movie regular Hiep Tran Nghia) is at his Orange County home late one night, dressed in pajamas, when he gets a phone call from an acquaintance named Tay. Tay—played by Saigon native actor Dustin Nguyen as a smoothie with the cool nerve of a career desperado—needs a ride for himself, plus a pair of his pals who have just escaped from county jail.
Long thinks it over for a second. Then Tay pulls out a handgun and the foursome takes off in Long’s car for a meandering midnight cruise through dusty streets and cheap motel rooms. No one talks much at first, amid director Sing J. Lee’s terse mise-en-scene (co-written by Lee and Christopher Chen). Potentially violent plot turns begin to occur at the slowed-down pace of real life, as seen through a film noir kaleidoscope.
Long’s dilemma, of course, is one of the most familiar in American crime movies. Unnerved by Tay’s description of the time when one of the escapees, Aden (Dali Benssalah), tortured a kidnap victim with a blowtorch in the backseat of a getaway car, Long clams up and does what he is told. The hoods are trying, at this late hour, to get hold of fake passports and leave the country. But it’s obvious they don’t have the brains or luck to pull it off. Where does that leave the old man?
Contemporary audiences don’t meet a character like Long Ma very often. The cinematic tale of an elderly Vietnamese man trying to reconcile memories of his homeland’s turbulent history with his struggle as a lonely, overlooked California newcomer is already unusual enough. Further, Accidental Getaway Driver’s lethal setting is nowhere nearly quite as “camera-ready” as a typical lightweight feel-good flick about, say, crazy rich Asians or the cross-cultural dating scene. When the scenario suddenly adds “accessory to a felony” to Long’s résumé, something’s gotta give.
In his feature-film debut, filmmaker Lee charts an uncustomary course. For a story involving kidnapping, assault and battery and false imprisonment, driver Long’s ordeal takes a surprisingly philosophical turn in the last half. It could easily be mistaken for an adapted stage play, poised uneasily between a sugary SoCal lifestyle flick and a formulaic Fast & Furious wannabe.
As driver Long’s back story is revealed, we learn that he was a lieutenant colonel in the South Vietnamese army—i.e., ARVN, the losing side—during the 1950s–’70s war, and is now separated from his wife and children. Long’s face, his downcast expression and his lengthy, aching silences tell us more about him than any amount of expository talk. Almost all the dialogue between Long and his captor Tay is in Vietnamese.
Actor Hiep’s performance, a one-note symphony of regret, is matched step for step by Nguyen’s Tay. Actor-filmmaker Nguyen is a Vietnamese immigrant veteran of A-list multiplex fare as well as Viet-Am crossover projects in festivals. In Accidental the bad guys taking the old man for a ride fall into three familiar categories: Tay, simpatico but frustrated; Aden, the cold, hard killer; and Eddie (actor Phi Vu), the impatient, brutal kid. There’s a $50,000 reward for turning in the escapees. Tay himself did not escape from county jail. Decisions need to be made.
Not quite a bare-knuckle actioner but far from being a carjack weepie, The Accidental Getaway Driver may be the missing link that connects the once-flourishing Vietnamese domestic film industry to Hollywood’s current trends. With its hard-earned straight face it could easily be called a modern-day melange of Collateral and The Petrified Forest. This one is worth the trip.
Opens March 7 at the AMC Eastridge 15, 2190 Eastridge Loop, San Jose. 408.274.2274.
