Contentar
Best movie of this year hands down!
Invaderbank
The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.
Portia Hilton
Blistering performances.
Bradley Baum
This film is one of the worst I have seen for a very, very long time! I saw another dreadful film just before this one but of the two this is worse! There is absolutely totally nothing good about this film and I don't mean that in a way! Gee what a surprise that a person that appeared in a reality television program and has no drama training from drama school whatsoever should get acting parts ahead of someone that actually has been to drama school! he fact that Jamie Chung has not been to acting school and done the full however many years it is training shows as she is completely wooden! The film itself doesn't make any sense. After being kidnapped the girls are all given kittens to look after. Why?!?! There is absolutely no reason for it and none is given! The girls are holed up in what looks like a prison corridor with their cells all along one side of it. The cells have a corrugated door that slides up and down like a garage door. There is nowhere for the cats to get out. As no litter trays, litter scooper or anything else that would be needed were given to the girls ....yes, you can see where this is going can't you?....what happened to all of the cats' urine and faeces! Then here are the numerous points in the film where she had ample opportunities and time to escape and go to the police but just didn't take up on any of them. Maybe she actually loved being a prostitute and actually loved this way of living but just didn't want to show it! Then there was this whole injecting the prostitutes with something that was supposed to make them compliant but the acting was so bad you never got the feeling that the prostitutes ever really were. Oh, and where were her parents and the police? Absolutely nowhere to be seen! It was as if the parents couldn't care and couldn't be bothered to even try and find her and so therefor hadn't even be bothered to contact the police over the fact that their daughter had gone missing! And because they couldn't be bothered or care the police did nothing! But then the should have been doing something anyway and they weren't! Surely some investigating would have started as to where and why two police officers have suddenly disappeared to after they had been killed in the desert by the corrupt sheriff in charge of the prostitution ring but nope nothing happened! That was pretty much it for the whole film....nothing happened!
ktyson9426
I have a tendency to read up on the facts behind a movie as I watch it... Especially movies based on "true stories". More times than not movies based on true stories tend to be two disjointed details a writer has connected through some fictional thread. I've learned from my research that many times a writer will take some minor event and write an over the top story about it to make it entertaining and interesting. Usually these movies go way over the top and when I read up on it, I find myself disappointed by what the reality of the fact are. This apparently was not the case with the movie Eden. As I researched the movie, I kept reading more and more horrific events about the life of Chong Kim. He "true" story had her sexually abused by baby sitters, her fathers friends, teachers and principles... and then physically abused by her mother. According to what I read about her on the internet, she was a Criminology major when she was kidnapped by a "boyfriend", and sold into sexual slavery. As her story unraveled she thought she was subjected of domestic abuse and not sexually exploited by pimps as she was sexually abused in warehouses with 40 other women. Her story also involved her NOT calling 911 during an escape attempt, and instead wasn't able to find any help because she didn't have any identification, before her pimps/kidnappers found her. In another escape attempt she was shunned by a mall full of parents as she screamed and yelled for help. Apparently, her final escape involved her crawling through an air duct in a Vegas hotel, knocked a man unconscious with her shoe heel and made her escape by stealing his car. As I read through her story as I watched the movie, I realized they had to scale back on these "details" about her life to make a believable movie. Which unfortunately puts this woman's story in a dubious position with me. I put in several hours of effort to find any evidence that her story was true. All I could find were interviews with her.... No news stories, no connections to arrests, nothing. I would think in an attempt to identify how warehouses filled with women could occur in America she would at least testify in front of a congressional subcommittee. Unfortunately I never found any vett'ing by any news agency to back up her story.While I feel the subject of sexually trafficking to be an extremely important one.... The more I learned about this women the more I find it difficult to take this movie seriously. As far as the movie itself went... I found it to have value in the sense it has people talking about the subject. I felt the acting was well done and you could feel the fear of Jamie Chung character Eden. I also found the twisted, and emotionally crippled character of Vaughan to be interesting as he goes from looking at Eden as a piece of meat to thinking they were in a pseudo relationship. There were the typical plot holes that one has to look the other way for like the mystery spray that instantaneously kills Vaughn, the existence of underground hospitals that imprison pregnant women for months at a time, the corrupt US Marshal that runs the day to day operations. Then the story tip toed around the underlying story of the movie... for a sex slave operation there was a noticeable lack of sex or violence. Which sort of left me scratching my head a bit.My gut instinct tells me there is some seriously shady holes in this woman's "true story"... I just felt they should have scaled it back a bit more and made it grittier to really highlight the plight of the women in the sex trade industry. The way this movie is right now, I'm expecting to have to debating the truthfulness of Chong Kim's life rather than the topic of sexual trafficking.
timlin-4
This is one of those disturbing female-produced coming-of-age fantasies, but instead of the heroine being raped by her dad, or by her lesbian teacher, or by a vampire, this time it's by pimps. (Yes, the pimp is even a moody cute guy) And it's biographical, written by a survivor! As usual every detail of the plot rings false, and it's impossible to relate to or become engrossed in the drama. It's a story of emotion, reality is barely an afterthought. That said, these movies are usually decently enough made (these girls are readers, and daddy paid for film school), they feature a cute girl who can act well enough, and they do indeed have some emotional power. But these forced tears are thin and annoying
John Raymond Peterson
Human trafficking is a recurring subject and it deserves to be told and retold however many ways it can. I've watched many of those movies and two stand out for me, Trade, the 2007 brilliant and powerful work by Marco Kreuzpaintner starring Kevin Kline (you need to see it) and Eden, the real story of a survivor like few others. In 2012, Jamie Chung had a supporting role in Premium Rush, which should have helped boost her starring role in this drama directed by Indi writer/producer/director Megan Griffiths.Chung was as good as can be in the role of Eden (that's the character's name); such type of character is never easy to play and make believable, but I feel she pulled it off. If you can get passed the fact that it is subject that has been exploited, pun intended but not in jest, the story of Eden makes for a good thriller as well as a good drama.I enjoyed seeing Beau Bridges in a villainous role; he played that part like the pro that he is. You won't see his demise coming the way it does; I'll say no more for I don't wish to spoil one of the good things about the movie, or the plot. I recommend it if you want to see a rising star by the name Jamie Chung.
