The Delta (1997)

The handsome "Lincoln" (Shayne Gray) has a decent life, plenty of money and a girlfriend "Monica" (Rachel Zan Huss) but he also has a secret. When she declines to put out one evening, he heads to a cruising area of Memphis where he initially encounters a daddy figure before meeting "Minh". He's a Vietnamese man who is almost the antithesis of "Lincoln". His mother quite recently arrived in the USA, his father was an American soldier - they split up and he's now living with some fellow Vietnamese. They two men chat but "Minh" isn't so keen to go straight for the sex; he wants to get to know his new friend a little. To that end, they take his father's boat and a different kind of cruise on the delta; have a beer and set off some fireworks. It's that latter activity that annoys the police and sends "Minh" feeing into the forest. Has he something to hide? Well the tail end of the film enlightens us a little to the true nature of this man. I did like the concept here, but I'm afraid the acting is pretty nondescript and for a film that relies heavily on conversation, the audio mix makes much of the dialogue inaudible and that proves quite irritating after a while. I think it might have made for a better short feature. Condensing it's more potent aspects into an hour or so might have given it more punch, but as it is - it's too slow and thinly strung out.