Blue Bayou review – overcooked but wrenching US deportation drama

Inspired by the harrowing real-life stories of adopted children who find themselves facing deportation from the US to the countries of their birth, Blue Bayou is an eye-opening glimpse into a dysfunctional side of America. Justin Chon wrote, directs and stars in the picture, about a Korean American man raised in the Louisiana bayou who finds himself targeted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement just as his wife (a miscast Alicia Vikander) is about to give birth to their first child.

Chon’s directing choices are bold and sometimes interesting, but the screenplay – a big old overcooked melodrama that chucks in everything from a motorcycle chase to a terminal cancer subplot – is an almighty mess. Kudos, though, for a wrenching final scene involving Chon’s character, Antonio, and his stepdaughter, Jesse (Sydney Kowalske), that lays bare the human cost of an inhumane policy.