Movie Reviews: Zombie Girl, The Yellow Handkerchief, Defendor

FORMOSA BETRAYED Like any normal former TV star with free time and a cause that’s caught his eye, James Van Der Beek could have done a voice-over for a documentary about Taiwan’s bloody struggle for independence. Instead, he plays an FBI agent in this educational thriller set in early-1980s Taiwan. After a Chicago prologue suggests that a Taiwanese-American professor and human-rights advocate may have been killed by gang members hired from across the Pacific, Jake Kelly (Van Der Beek) is dispatched to the embattled island for a look-see. Welcomed by fishy local officials and a flinty embassy liaison (Wendy Crewson), Jake starts applying his two investigative techniques: shouting “FBI!” while running full-tilt at uncomprehending local police, and getting pulled into doorways by underground resisters to the nationalist government. In impromptu history chats between the American and every other person he meets, carpetbagging anticommunist Chiang Kai-shek is recalled as the ur-villain and looter-in-chief, planting the seed for later repression and torture of native Taiwanese. Neither the investigation nor the suspense (hobbled by editorializing) has much impact; the movie, necessarily shot in Thailand, plays like secret-history tourism, complete with archival footage haunting the screen. True to the genre, the question “What about the truth?” is raised by Jake — only to be, incredibly, summarily dismissed. (Nicolas Rapold) (Beverly Center)

GO  THE YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF Director Udayan Prasad’s post-Katrina road movie is not a remake of Yôji Yamada’s 1977 winner of the first-ever Japanese Academy Award for best picture, nor is it tied as tightly to Tony Orlando’s oak tree as it is to “Going Home,” the Pete Hamill short story that inspired all of the above. (Of course, Hamill stole from folklore, so go stare at the sun: Ain’t nothing new under it.) Affecting in his muted mien of regret, William Hurt plays a freshly paroled Louisiana ex-con with a history of violence — as Maria Bello can attest in parallel flashbacks — who hitches a lift and briefly becomes a father figure to a makeshift family of self-perceived misfits. Behind the wheel is a socially retarded, redneck eccentric (Savage Grace’s Eddie Redmayne) with a dire need for Ritalin and a hard-on for the other drifter, a too-trusting teen romantic (Twilight’s Kristen Stewart) with daddy issues and an awkward surge of budding sexuality. It’s the mismatched-ensemble-together-in-loneliness formula that Sundance dreams are made of, and the predictables add up: that title image signaling hope from afar; a run-in with the po-po; and occasionally the next line of dialogue. Still, Hurt’s revealed criminal past could’ve been cringe-worthy, and it’s not. All three leads are solidly convincing in their candor. And Oscar-winning cinematographer Chris Menges (The Mission) shoots the hell out of the swampy South to make for a nontoxic diversion. (Aaron Hillis) (Playhouse, Royal, Town Center)

ZOMBIE GIRL Romero, Cronenberg, Jackson, Snyder: Plenty of directors figured out on their first go-’round that all you need is a script and some zombies to keep the marketability high, the budget low and the pitch brief and breezy. Emily Hagins, an aspiring filmmaker in Austin, took the same track for her debut feature, Pathogen. The difference is that Emily, when we meet her in the behind-the-scenes documentary Zombie Girl, is 12. Directors Justin Johnson, Aaron Marshall and Erik Mauck first learned of Hagins’ homemade movie after seeing her casting calls stapled to telephone poles, and while that kind of low-fi, low-budget enthusiasm does a lot to help Zombie Girl charm you, there’s actually a lot more at stake. As Emily’s mom, Megan, supports her daughter’s dream and buckles under the weight of microbudgets, mistakes and make-it-up-as-you-go filmmaking, we get a glimpse of a mother-daughter relationship that has bright blossoms of love but thornier moments, too. Zombie Girl also functions as a neat look inside Austin’s film-buff subculture, where Emily found support from film nerds and filmmakers with a common undying passion for pure horror. (Pathogen’s zombies, Emily emphasizes, do not run.) With giddy-gory title cards by Deborah Allison and a sweet-but-never-saccharine appreciation for dreams, family bonds and fake blood, Zombie Girl, like Pathogen, has rough edges, raw passion and real spirit. (James Rocchi) (Downtown Independent)