Pat (Mike Kingpayom) lives with his family at the end of Province 77. His father runs a struggling restaurant, grandma totters around, and Pat is the troubled middle child between two sisters. The world of big pimpin' lowriders and Midnight Club street racers is far more appealing to Pat, who befriends a rising gangster tough guy, Goldie (Jeremy Thama, whose agent no doubt sells him as "The Thai Vin Diesel").

Pat becomes immersed in the gangster- sorry- gangsta' lifestyle, meanwhile, his father's restaurant is in danger of being shut down due to his failure to pay taxes. A mysterious immigrant (or FOB- Fresh Off the Boat) named Dan (Pete Thongahua) moves into their building and lends a helpful hand around the restaurant. Dan also draws the ire of Goldie's gang after he beats some of the punks up. Pat is told to take care of Dan, and betraying Goldie is not a very smart move, especially since Goldie is about to take out his supplier and widen his criminal empire.

There are quite a few storytelling stumbles. This is director/co-writer Smith Timsawat's first feature and unfortunately he falls prey to some first timer lack of vision. The actors are mostly okay, though the talent pool varies from professional, to amateur, to just wooden. The script is weak and comes off very unfocused. The film is obviously aiming for the young urban crowd (which like all inner city youth groups these days seems obsessed with a rap lifestyle), so you would think and A-to-B-to-C narrative would be easy to flesh out without being jammed with too many muddy plotlines.

Pat is shown to be mostly coarse and looking down on his family, sneering at his fathers advice, storming off whenever he gets any lip. Then, the film seems to inject a half-hearted attempt to say Pat was just being a gangster to help out the family. I guess this would have made more sense if there had been the tiniest clue that he gave a damn about his father's problems, rather than relishing in beating up rival drug dealers, clubbing with Goldie, smoking dope, and sleeping with hookers.

The film opens with Goldie gunning down Pat which kills any suspense in the narrative. Not that the film wouldn't be predictable, regardless, but it just makes the final third a slog because we already know Pat will get on Goldie's sour side somehow. Worse yet, because of the intro, we know exactly what will happen.

Early in the film, Pat steals a car from one of Goldie's gang and takes it to a street race. A day or two later Goldie and Pat meet on the street, a flashback reveals Goldie saving Pat from a group of bullies and the following scene is Goldie more or less proposing the Pat join his gang. Which doesn't make sense in the context of Pat stealing the car. I don't know why he would steal a car from one of Goldie's crew and flirt with those consequences. Or if Pat didn't know whose car it was, the writers decided to make it one of Goldie's crew, for absolutely no reason, because nothing happens because of the incident.

The above problem makes is hard to make sense of because the general logic of the characters relation to one another involves a small circle. For instance, out of nowhere and for no damn good reason, Pat's older sister is revealed to be one of Goldie's ex-girlfriends. After spending an hour plus where we know Goldie is the bad guy in the piece, this bit of info is sloppily injected (another quick flashback) to push the point further. Likewise, much is made of Dan's "mystery" connection to the family which ends up being pretty easy to figure out. Again, it is told via another hammy flashback.

I feel bad for slagging an indie effort, but the storytelling stumbles just keep it from being enjoyable. It would have been better if they just stuck to the simple gangsta' genre cliches with a Thai-American slant. The story didn't need the muddle of every character being connected to each other with some melodrama thread. The story didn't need a bad guy (Goldie's supplier) who for some odd reason has a comical scarred face and bad wig and, like some cartoon villain, has an office in the back of a strip club that- I kid you not- is a rocky cave complete with torches. Likewise, we didn't need comic scenes with grandma doing unfunny gags to bubble fart synth music. And, of course, it would have been nice if the film makers could have ended the film without having to fall back on a bad voice over that speedily resolves all of the films various threads.

The DVD: Tai Seng

Picture: Anamorphic Widescreen. Well, you can expect some little stumbles since it is an indie, on the cheap, film. The cinematography often falls prey to bad lighting or a bit too soft focus. Night scenes, especially, come across pretty bad. Technically the transfer is compromised by compression artefacts, the worst of which is some macro-blocking and edge enhancement.

Sound: 5.1or 2.0 Thai/English language, or 2.0 Cantonese dub, with optional English or Chinese subtitles. Some standard low budget quirks like weak dialogue recording are present but nothing too bothersome. The music is by the Thai rap group Thaitanium. Some of the beats grow a little repetitious, not too mention simple, like one song whose chorus is just a chant of "You mutha'fucka. You mutha'fucka', you. You fuckin' fucka'. You fuckin' fucka', you..."

The subs end up being annoying. The film is primarily in English but for all of the frequent Thai bits you have to turn on the English subs, which translate everything, English and Thai. You end up being forced to watch the entire film with subs.

Extras: Extras are limited to a trailer plus some other Tai Seng trailers. Despite not liking the film, I actually wouldn't have minded a making of featurette or director/actor commentary because I'm sure an indie feature like this could have some good anecdotes.

Conclusion: US Thai immigrant deserve a good feature that caters to them and their situation. Province 77 just isn't it. Here you have a messy film and a messier DVD, so I regretfully suggest your time is better spent watching something else.