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wkcranberry
Reviews
Search Party (2014)
Funny at times, outrageously bad and of poor taste at other times.
Movie would have been lot better, if the writers thought about it with some common sense. Some scenes were hilarious, but some dumb and dumber. Not a total waste of time, but almost there.
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Entertaining but unrealistic in portrayal of customs
Movie was funny and entertaining. Great scenery, acting, chemistry and dialogue. Having been raised in a very traditional Chinese family, the portrayal of customs was lacking credibility.
Eleanor would not have directly confronted Rachel to tell her that she could not marry her son. Face and guanxi are critical aspects of the Chinese culture. Any such communication would have been indirect on Eleanor's part. For Rachel and newer generation Chinese, that concept is considered archaic and even devious, but for older Asians avoiding the lost of face of others is critical. Perhaps, something the new generations should think about like the golden rule.
The Mah Jongg scene was also lacking credibility. The real Eleanor would never agree to meet under those circumstances.
While the film does portray the conflicts and issues of Westernized Chinese and traditional Chinese, those scenes were totally off the mark.
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2016)
Abuse of Power by Overambitious DA
This movie is about a community savings bank in NYC servicing the Chinese immigrant community.
The Bank had a deposit run in 2003 after news broke that a rogue employee had stolen money from the bank, and that run nearly closed the bank and required millions in expenses to fix. Likely as a result of the losses, the bank needed to find offsetting income and focused on real estate lending and then selling loans made to Fannie Mae. The Bank made good income on such activities beginning in 2009.
At most community banks including Abacus, commissions are paid to lower and mid-level loan officers of the bank to find loans which are profitable to the bank when sold, but unfortunately some greedy and unscrupulous or lowly scrupulous loan officers will coach loan applicants on how to game the system to obtain a loan that they do not qualify. At Abacus, rogue loan officers did exactly that by coaching loan applicants how to lie on applications whether by false income or collateral.
It is the responsibility of the independent underwriting team at the Bank to check and double check those facts. In this movie, the prosecution tries show that the Bank and senior officers were complicit in making fraudulent loans by not catching the false applications. The trial lasted more than 2 months with witness after witness admitting the information in their application was false though not always with the help of the lower bank officer. So the question was should the bank and higher officers be found guilty of fraud for not catching this. I believe the jury reached the correct verdict, though neither the Sungs nor the DA should be in the clear for noncriminal wrongdoing. The DA for being too ambitious to make a big name for himself and the Sungs for not being more vigilant in their pursuit of the gold. The trial cost the bank and Sungs millions, and as a result the Bank entered a formal agreement with the OCC to improve profitability after losses related to the trial costs. It was interesting that Jill Sung, President did not testify in the trial and that she works in a Chinese bank not being able to speak Chinese. Mrs. Sung was right that banking should have been left to others.