Come See the Paradise

20th Century-Fox. Director Alan Parker; Producer Robert F. Colesberry; Screenplay Alan Parker; Camera Michael Seresin; Editor Gerry Hambling; Music Randy Edelman;; Art Director Geoffrey Kirkland

Dennis Quaid
Tamlyn Tomita
Sab Shimono
Shizuko Hoshi
Stan Egi
Ronald Yamamoto

In Alan Parker's richly mounted romantic saga of the Second World War relocation camps, the Asian-American cast is exemplary and Dennis Quaid has never been better. Noble if overlong effort depicts the love affair between the Irish-American labor activist and a woman from a well-established Japanese family ripped from its Los Angeles roots.

Quaid plays Jack McGurn, a newcomer to LA in 1936 who gets a job as a projectionist in a Little Tokyo theater and falls in love with the boss' daughter (Tamlyn Tomita). After he's fired and forbidden to see her again, they elope to Seattle, where, unlike in California, it was legal for a Japanese-American and a Caucasian to marry.

In general, Parker avoids most of the complexities behind the internment in favor of a broad, sentimental tale that emphasizes emotions.

Quaid gives a wonderfully open and unaffected performance, putting across romance, charm and integrity without resorting to any of the gimmicks he's used in earlier films. Tomita is a lovely, if under-nuanced, actress, and Egi as her brother is particularly interesting among the large supporting cast.

(Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1990. Running time: 138 MIN.

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