BY JOHN M. WHALEN

“Alamo Bay” (1985), a film directed by the late Louis Malle, was an opportunity for the French filmmaker, who directed “Atlantic City,” “My Dinner with Andre,” and “Elevator to the Gallows,” to add another great film to his resume. Unfortunately, the movie, based on the true story of conflict between American and Vietnamese fisherman in Texas, is an opportunity squandered.

In the years following the Fall of Saigon in 1975, a million Vietnamese refugees fled to the U.S. Some of them settled in communities along the Texas Gulf Coast. Their mere presence antagonized the local fisherman, many of whom were Vietnam vets. One in particular, Shang Pierce (Ed Harris) hates “gooks” and feels threatened by the competition of the Vietnamese, who proved to be excellent fishermen and hard workers. He’s married, but, of course, his wife is a nag, so he resumes an affair with Glory (Harris’s real life wife Amy Madigan), who has come back to Alamo Bay to help her ailing father Wally (Donald Moffat) run his shrimp wholesale business. The film centers on the tensions that build between them when Shang loses his boat because of missed payments. He blames Glory and her father for hiring Vietnamese fisherman.

Into this seething caldron of resentment, comes Dinh (Ho Nguyen) a young Vietnamese immigrant looking for relatives who live there. He lands a job at Wally’s, putting himself in the middle of the conflict between Glory and Shang. When Glory defends Dinh’s right to work, Shang perceives it as a betrayal and thinks she has more than just a humanitarian interest in the young man.

Tensions build between the American and Asian shrimpers. Malle and screenwriter Alice Arlen, do a good job showing the escalation of bad feelings, and have no compunction about presenting a one-sided view of the conflict. The Vietnamese are shown as good people who only want to work hard, live a peaceful life, and be able to pursue their version of the American Dream. The Americans, for the most part, are shown as bigoted rednecks, who want the Vietnamese gone. Enter Ku Klux Klan organizer (William Frankfurter), who tells them history has shown white people will prevail. He begins to outline a strategy. But Shang has no patience for slow tactics. He wants action.

The next morning armed men, some with KKK robes and hoods, go out in their boats and take some pot shots at the Asians. Violence increases as crosses are burned and Molotov cocktails tossed.

With this basic situation, based as it is on real-life events, this should have been a compelling, emotionally-involving film. But, somehow, it isn’t. Arlen’s script may be the problem. Arlen, who co-wrote “Silkwood,” another socially conscious film, hasn’t pulled her punches as far as showing which side she’s on. But when it is laid on this heavily, when characters become stereotypes. who seem to exist only to prove a point, the drama is undermined by polemic. And, oddly enough, where there should be commentary on the racism and injustice in the story, Malle instead, presents the scenes of hatred and violence in a flat documentary-like style, that leaves you uninvolved. I kept thinking what Oliver Stone would have done with a story like this.

“Alamo Bay”’s greatest failure, however, is the lack of insight into the character of Dinh, who is presented as a positive-thinking hard worker who just wants to fit in and achieve success. Since he is really the central character of this story, as a symbolic representation of the entire Vietnamese community, the filmmakers should have invested more depth to his character. Nowhere are we shown the real impact the situation in Alamo Bay has on him personally. Even worse there was a real chance to explore the whole tragic series of events that resulted in him and his people having to leave their country. There is one only one almost ludicrous exchange of dialog between Dinh and Glory where she asks what happened to him in Vietnam. He says the Viet Cong raided his village and he had to flee into the jungle. While hiding there he says he had to eat grass. “Eat Grass!” Glory says, as if it were the equivalent of surviving the Mai Lai Massacre. A better writer would have given a deeper picture of what people like Dinh experienced as the result of war. Eating grass would be pretty low on the list of hardships they had to endure.

Despite its shortcoming, however, “Alamo Bay” is worth viewing if only because it dares to deal with a subject most filmmakers would be afraid to tackle. Harris and Madigan, who worked together in “Places in the Heart,” the excellent HBO flick, “Riders of the Purple Sage,” and “Pollock” are excellent. Ho Nguyen as Dinh stayed close to the surface of his character, which was probably what Malle and Arlen wanted of him. And more’s the pity.

“Alamo Bay,” is a one of the limited edition (3,000 copies) Blu-Ray discs from Twilight Time. Aside from a separate audio channel for Ry Cooder’s atmospheric score, the theatrical trailer, and a booklet giving some background on the story written by Julie Kirgo, there are no extras. An audio commentary, at least by Harris, Madigan or Arlen, would seem to be a required feature for a disc selling at $29.99. But that’s all you get.

The transfer to Blu-Ray, however, is flawless and the 1.0 DTS HD Master audio is very good. It’s disappointing that the original film did not have a stereo soundtrack, but the separate track for Cooder’s music (which is similar to the score he wrote for “Paris, Texas)” is in stereo and sounds just fantastic.

Bottom line: “Alamo Bay” deserves viewing. It’s a worthwhile attempt to make a serious film about an important subject. Louis Malle is no longer with us, but thank goodness there are always a few directors around, like him, who dare to make such films. They are, sadly, becoming an endangered species. Kudos to Twilight Time for preserving this one to Blu-Ray.

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