Journey From The Fall - Controversies

Controversies

The OC Weekly, an alternative weekly in Orange County, California, published two reviews of the film. The first and longer review was written by R. Scott Moxley, praised the director for "bring to life the true South Vietnamese experience". The second and much shorter review was published almost a year later, written by Scott Foundas. In his review, Foundas praised the film for being "one of the few movies to depict Vietnam and its aftermath through the eyes of the Vietnamese" but ultimately characterized it as "old-fashioned and even phony". This conclusion brought a flurry of letters to the paper, most disagreeing with Foundas and taking offense at his "phony" characterization, prompting Foundas to clarify his review, claiming that he was "by no means suggesting that the history depicted by the movie didn't happen, but rather that matters were not nearly as black-and-white as Mr. Tran makes them seem".

In Vietnam, where the film was neither filmed nor shown officially, pirated copies were so prevalent that the government issued orders to confiscate all DVD copies. The film was banned for its "reactionary" content. The government consider the film "defamation" and a "distortion" of its policy of sending people to reeducation camps after 1975. The film was considered such a threat that the Ministry of Public Security's newspaper Công an Nhân dân featured an article warning about the "poisonous film" and claiming that "most overseas Vietnamese are indifferent or critical of this movie". The article also quoted Foundas and several random people in online message boards to bolster its claim.