Cyclo
Price: $42.99
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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9781567303186
Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 1567303188
Label: New Yorker Video
Languages:
Manufacturer: New Yorker Video
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: New Yorker Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: February 03, 2004
Running Time: 123 minutes
Studio: New Yorker Video
Theatrical Release Date: August 02, 1996
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
The city was once named Saigon; it is now called Ho Chi Minh City, and in this powerful second feature by Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung (The Scent of Green Papaya) it looks like a lost circle of hell.
Cyclo is a survey of a society in decay, in which conventional plotting gives way to a series of enigmatic episodes and haunting observations. There are two main characters: Cyclo (Le Van Loc) is a poor urban teenager who scratches out a living operating a bicycle taxi in the murderous city traffic; the Poet (Hong Kong star Tony Leung) is the son of an upper-class family who has depressively drifted into pimping and fencing--wartime rackets still thriving in the new Vietnam.
Images of appalling violence are played against backgrounds of banal, everyday bustle--a buzzing flow of meaningless, insectlike activity. Hung's vision may be dispiritingly bleak, but his filmmaking is vivid and inventive. Each shot is distinguished by a particular quality of lighting, framing, or texture that lifts it out of the ordinary and into the realm of the strange, ravishing, and insinuating. --Dave Kehr
Description:
In the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, a young cyclo (pedicab driver) transports anonymous passengers through the teeming streets, trying to eke out a meager living for his two sisters and elderly grandfather. When his bicycle is stolen by a local gang, he descends into the gruesome underbelly of this corrupt and violent city. Seduced by easy money, the Cyclo is swept deeper into the crime ring lead by the quietly charismatic Poet (Tony Leung of CHUNGKING EXPRESS and BULLET IN THE HEAD).
Unbeknown to the Cyclo, his older sister (the exquisite star of THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA) has also been mesmerized by the brooding Poet and turns to prostitution to please him. Director Tran Anh Hung, whose brilliant debut THE SCENT OF GREEN PAPAYA established him as a master visualist, fuses the neorealist style of THE BICYCLE THIEF with the kinetic energy of TAXI DRIVER in this gritty tale of innocence lost in the urban jungle of Vietnam.
Average Rating: 
Rating:
- Dark & depressingI found "Cyclo" to be interesting in the beginning. Then it became hard to follow as it spiraled into a dark abyss with no point, no conclusion, and no relief. It portrayed cruelty upon cruelty and left me wondering how realistic the story could possibly be. My husband and I were both sorry, that hoping for some resolution or understanding, we watched it to the end.
Rating:
- The Funny Side of Poverty, Despair, Prostitution and Creepy Little KidsThis movie was playing at a local film festival and I almost didn't go. I mean I had heard good things about it, but the description seemed a little too much like Salaam Bombay (Widescreen Special Edition). You got the innocent kid trying to get money to go back to his village. The older sister being led into prostitution and the pimp that is both a cause of grief and a product of his society. My girlfriend at the time didn't want to see it and usually I follow her lead in terms of dreary melodramas ... Read More
Rating:
- After LOS OLVIDADOS and before CITY OF GOD there was CYCLO.Reminiscent of Bunuel's LOS OLVIDADOS and NAZARIN, CYCLO is filled to overflowing with negative images...even the singers in the open air restaurant are both missing a leg.
Le Van Loc is a malnourished young man who operates a bicycle taxi to help support his two sisters and aging grandfather, who all also work. When his bicycle is stolen he is forced to do odd jobs to pay off his debt to the Boss Lady. His life, which was already [...], is now flushed straight down into the gurgling bowels ... Read More
Rating:
- Tran Anh Hùng's vision of Hell on earth.Tran Anh Hùng is a Vietnamese French film director. He received an Oscar nomination for his first film The Scent of Green Papaya (1993), and received critical acclaim for his followup Cyclo (Xích lô) (1995). Reminscent of Bicycle Thieves with the intensity of Taxi Driver, Cyclo is set in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), and tells the story of a young cyclo driver, "Cyclo" (Le Van Loc), who is forced into working for a gang after his bicycle taxi cycle is stolen. His sister (the beautiful star of The ... Read More
Rating:
- Early 50's Roy RogersI should begin by stating that I lived and worked in Saigon for 8 years
in the 90's. My experience will therefore be different from many other
viewers.
The film effectively conveys the kinetic pace of Saigon, especially in
the later 90's, and the sense, if not the details, of how the low level,
cyclo based,"mob" exists and operates.
While at times it was dead on, at other times it portrayed things that
were culturaly ludicrous. Cyclo's don't have clean ... Read More
