Province 77

Thai-American filmmaker Smith Timsawat makes his directorial debut with PROVINCE 77, an innovative blend of ghetto drama and immigrant saga that plays out like a Thai version of BOYZ N THE HOOD. Pete (Pete Thongchua) is a restless urban youth living with his immigrant family in the predominantly Thai section of Los Angeles known as Province 77. Frustrated with his father's slow progress with the American Dream, Pete befriends a vicious gang leader and soon finds himself drawn into a lucrative but high-stakes underworld of sex, drugs, and violent crime that inexorably exacts its deadly price. Earning authentic street cred with high-octane gunfight and drag-racing sequences set to a gangsta rap soundtrack, PROVINCE 77 is a hardhitting action drama that, like its Korean counterpart BETTER LUCK TOMORROW, heralds the arrival of an exciting new genre in Asian-American cinema. (Verleiher-Text)