Eden (2012)

Best movie ever!

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Blistering performances.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Some viewers would say the film was weak on portraying how the human sex traffic trade takes full advantage of unsuspecting teenagers (boys as well as girls) by scooping them off the street due to these teenagers own ignorance to the extent of the sex traffic trade, and/or more likely by raising these teenagers self worth, albeit temporarily, until the pimps have full control of them.Whether or not this film is loosely based on a true story of a young South Korean girl named Chong Kim should not be what the majority of the films audience should be focused on, nor the disappointment that a movie that is based on the illegal sex trafficking lacks any gratuitous x-rated sex scenes. Instead what the viewers like myself absorbed from Miss Chong Kim's ordeal is we need to do a better job as a nation in realizing how extensive the sex trafficking trade really is, and what we all can do to stop it.Firstly, there would be no sex trafficking in North America if there was no demand for the supply of teenage girls (and boys). In this film actor Beau Bridges does more than an adequate job as the corrupt law enforcement officer Bob Gault. Some of the other reviews commented that this is not realistic that a law enforcement officer would be a leader in the sex trafficking ring, but every year law enforcement officers across North America are found guilty of many criminal offences and the important "breach of trust" crime.Actress Jamie Chung who plays the young teenage female victim Eden (with braces on her teeth), who was easily duped by a young man in uniform to foolishly feel safe enough to take a ride in his car and then she was quickly moved into the sex trade is a wake up call for all teenagers. The key message being there are many wolves in sheep's clothing and we as a nation have to be more engaged in stopping this corrupt criminal behaviour. Of course the actress Jamie Chung was taller, thinner, with a buff body than the shorter and heavier real life Chong Kim. I felt Jamie Chung did a great job in portraying the real life Chong Kim and how the victim had to adjust to a life in the sex traffic trade over the years she was imprisoned. I would also suggest to those critical viewers who scoffed that the dozens of teenage girls who were imprisoned under lock and behind gates in a storage locker as being unrealistic, lets be clear, regardless of where these teenage girls were being housed when they were not working on their backs or knees lets just agree that they were not living the life of a socialite like Paris Hilton, or as a madam like Heidi Fleiss. No I am quite sure that the teenage girls who are really imprisoned by pimps and actively (today and tomorrow) engaged in the sex traffic trade are living in squalor, eating poorly, and have absolutely no life or ambition to speak of. I thought the director/co-writer Megan Griffiths did an admirable job of finely balancing the need to NOT over sensationalize the graphic sexual plight of these young teenage girls, but instead emphasize how young women need to appreciate how easily it is to find themselves victims if they do not pay a lot more attention to the wrong type of people who could easily over power them if they are not a lot more careful as to who they choose to socialize or even be in the wrong place (like a bar, a public park late at night, or a pool hall) at the wrong time.This is a clean enough film that I would suggest parents of all young teenage girls as well as teenage boys should watch as a learning tool. This is real life sex trafficking that we should not ignore, but we should be doing a lot more to prevent. I give the film a fair 6 out of 10 rating for "lessons learned".

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.

Here we go again, like we've gone down this road, many times before. This is one of the more effective movies involving human traffic that equals Trade of 2007. By now, for me these sex slavery dramas are pretty cliché'd in terms of plot, I could score full marks if tested on this, this one having a happy, though forgettable, if sudden ending. But still, this one earns his weight's worth in being a powerful and harrowing drama about a pretty Korean girl meeting the wrong guy, and you've guessed it, what follows, especially if you've seen Taken or Human Trafficking, etc. She's abducted, groomed, for a sex slavery operation out in the desert. And guess who controls it, a crooked sheriff, an aging Beau Bridges, in a quite good and slightly menacing performance, as really I've never seen him play a bad guy. The girls who are hidden out in this desert warehouse/prison like building, are even given a little kitten each. Again our young hotties cater to paedophiles, (one almost deprived of his member) are used in S and M movies, as well providing entertainment for perverted businessmen, while also being used as collateral. And of course our victim lead, her given whore name: Eden, ends up becoming partners with one of our scum, (an interesting loser character not many years older than her) where we automatically know what her underlying intentions are going, especially after seeing her readjust and going with the flow, and again we're in old territory. They're are some hard to stomach scenes, but if you're into these kind of drama's, Eden is just another example of these fine indie films, though these types of plot driven slavery films are running their course.

As you've probably surmised, EDEN is not entirely "fun" to watch, but it's no more disturbing than it has to be. It's also rewarding in its revelation of an often-ignored problem in this country via a well-detailed and riveting story-line. Director Megan Griffiths did an outstanding job of treading a very thin line, making the film as tasteful as possible considering the subject matter--i.e., no gratuitous nudity--without sugar-coating the story. The level of empathy the audience attains with these poor girls is most acute. EDEN is quite convincing despite several stretches and unlikelihoods. While the plot of this film may appear predictable at first glance, there are some truly unexpected developments here.Though a bit larger-than-life in places, Jamie Chung is just hypnotic as victim-heroine "Eden." The script is similarly believable and carries a lot of weight in developing Eden and the other characters. The mistrustful alliance she builds with one of her abductors (well-played by Matt O'Leary) is as immediate as everything else in this film and is one of its realest aspects. The supporting cast who play characters we never get to know that well, particularly Tantoo Cardinal as "The Nurse," also contribute a great deal to EDEN's success.The "Behind the Scenes" Special Feature should not be missed after watching the film itself.