Fifteen years is probably long enough for someone like Leroy Nguyen to have lived and toiled through the independent film arena to garner a book publication one day. Whether or not that day comes remains to be seen, while his latest feature film makes the release rounds via Amazon on digital for rental or purchase with The Brokenhearted, a gritty new crime drama that is also poised to be his final bow.
Black Scar Blues was the first time I’d really been able to get a hold of Nguyen’s work, and only because he reached out to me on social media three years prior to its release. The film gave me a really good handle on his cinematic vision which sets discernibly apart from other independent creatives with whom he’s collaborated – folks like Fernando Jay Huerto, Joey Min, and Joseph Le to name a few. The Brokenhearted is an exemplary continuation of that endeavor which I admire and respect – the kind of indie work I tend to grade on a curve that I seldom give to directors when reviewing.
Additionally, I was allowed an early opportunity to look at a work-in-progress a few Octobers ago, which makes this analysis an honest rewatch. Nguyen may have made some changes and edits during the post-production process, which might contribute a little something more to the film this time around, in the version now offered to the public. To that end, I also had a hand in trimming the film’s logline for Nguyen early on, which is why I’m credited on IMDb, as well as in the Special Thanks portion of the film’s “end credits” roll.
The film’s bleak, blue-ish tint accentuates stark contrasts in light and dark at times, fleshing out the film’s noir tone and packaging. Such is the millieu crafted in The Brokenhearted as we fall in with characters James (Samuel Joon Lee), Sonny (Nguyen), and Winston (Travis Davis), a three’s company of a longstanding friendship made uneasy.
James is a struggling martial arts teacher who is deep in the red with his failing school after borrowing a large sum of money from the people Winston works for. The long-awaited return of Winston’s burly enforcer, Sonny, following a six-month stint behind bars, adds to the beleaguring weight of responsibility Sonny now bears to help mitigate the tension, as the business-minded Winston maintains his intent on collecting no matter what.
Making matters worse is the involvement of Winston’s new work partner, Troy (Gene Rush) and a sybilline masked thug (Alex Au) who plays a larger role in Winston’s actions in the backdrop of events. Shocking revelations and a clash of tempers threatens to escalate between the group, and it’s only a matter of time before everyone is in danger, including Sonny, and James’s sister, Liz (Jackie SJ Kim), with whom he shares history.
Nguyen applies his signature appeal to nostalgic aesthetics in editing and visuals. Select flashbacks are a mix of letterbox scenes and pan-and-scan VHS style video, mixed with Polaroids and a music style fusing rock and soul assembled by both when and composer Alex Kane. That energy echoes well into the cinematography and even some of the performance aspects of the film’s drama, a lot of which ranges from novice and dull, to feasible between each actor. The most rewarding moments are the most intense, which, understably, isn’t saying much if you have a sensitive palate and high expectations, even in areas where the writing itself is a plus.
The film takes a slow boil to many of those heightened moments, namely in which only five major fight scenes occur. Lee, a 4th-Dan TaeKwonDo master, is someone I’ve been interested in seeing more of on screen in some of the reel footage I’d seen before when I used to curate The Hit List. Where a good deal of his acting is more ‘miss’ than ‘hit’, he bodes especially well in screenfighting. The action overall with the rest of the co-stars holds up pretty well with simplistic, effective fight sequences. Kim, who first landed on our radar in a Mulan-inspired musical action shortfilm by Joseph Le, gets a few minutes of fisticuffs in the second half. It also tickles me to hear her mix English with Korean in a few scenes, which kind of makes me wish this film had more of that.
The grim mise en scène of Nguyen’s otherwise last film goes hard with fatalist fervor in its narration. It is also as imperfect as most other indies of its kind, while achieving as much as it can on the most minimal of means. The Brokenhearted definitely earns its leniency where it can as a bare-bones, hard-as-nails heroic bloodshed noir drama that touches on its melancholy message and volume, making for a rough-around-the-edges, albeit watchable bookend to a filmography worthy of a response antonymic to its title.
