REVIEW - THE ROCKET

The winter nights may be pretty cold, but my heart's even colder, and Kim Mordaunt's purportedly inspirational family film couldn't warm it up at all. The premise has potential, but Mordaunt takes it down predictable paths, its back almost perpetually to the tougher elements which provide The Rocket's only points of interest. Young Ahlo is born into a tribe in which twins are considered bad luck, as one twin will be blessed but the other cursed, and both are expected to be killed upon birth. But his brother is stillborn, and his mother refuses to do away with her only living offspring. It is as the creation of a new dam that will flood their Laotian village forces them to relocate that tragedy befalls the family of four, and Ahlo's grandmother's belief that he is the cursed twin is strengthened by one dire incident after another. Mordaunt's take on the story from the perspective of his child lead is to doll up difficult thematic issues, skim over them and then smother them with optimism and good humour from other, often tenuous sources. His film is, itself, about a somewhat wandering journey, but he just wanders through the plot with little attention to establishing mood or tone, or even narrative specifics. The impact is that the viewer is encouraged to forget about prior scenes, to not worry about forthcoming ones, and to concentrate on what's currently on screen - an isolating device that's not terribly effective, as it renders us lost and reevaluating the film at each and every change in direction. And this is exhausting, to the extent that this 96-minute feature felt significantly over two hours to me. Quality of acting varies, though Sitthiphon Disamoe does a cracking job as Ahlo. The lovely Laotian scenery is filmed in drab, dirty shades which do it no justice, and which fight against the film's otherwise mostly peppy disposition.