"Come See the Paradise" is a film that simply tries too hard to do too much. What success it has comes from an inherent sense of noble intentions as well as the strength of its excellent cast.
The film begins in the late '30s, with Dennis Quaid, as a "sweat-shop lawyer" — a knowledgable union organizer with no law degree — reluctantly becoming involved when a New York projectionists union sets fire to a local theater. He burns his hands trying to stop the fire and finds himself on the run.
After a stopover to get into a fight with his brother in Chicago, Quaid flees to Los Angeles and gets a job in Little Tokyo running the projector in a small theater that shows Japanese movies. There, he meets and falls in love with the theater manager's daughter (Tamlyn Tomita).
Naturally, the family disapproves, but they run off and get married anyway, thus alienating Tomita from her loved ones. Quaid and Tomita migrate to Seattle, have a daughter and Quaid reluctantly, again, gets involved in a union fight. Tomita can't take the strife and heads back home with their young daughter.
She arrives just in time — her family, friends and neighbors are being herded by federal agents into internment camps.
This is about midway into the film, and the rest of the picture has to do with the family's struggles to survive with dignity in the camps, while Quaid is drafted and frequently goes AWOL to visit his wife and daughter.
That's the basic plot, told in flashbacks as Tomita answers questions from her daughter about how she and Quaid met. Oddly, the story takes Quaid's point of view in the telling, and some of the incidents seem like things the girl should remember herself.
But writer-director Alan Parker, who similarly felt the need to tell a racially charged story from a white point of view in "Mississippi Burning," stumbles more seriously in his attempts to blend the three major story elements: Is this about union-busting, interracial marriage or the stateside internment camps of the early '40s?
The union element just gets in the way, especially when it becomes clear that Quaid's "sweat-shop" legal training isn't going to be used in any way. I kept thinking he would become part of the process that eventually led to the U.S. Supreme Court finding the camps unconstitutional, but instead the union material is simply cumbersome. And the love story, while sweet and pleasant, seems contrived in this setting.
What really gives the film its strength is the second half, as the internment camp plot takes over, bolstered by excellent performances from the entire Japanese cast, which makes up for Parker's more clunky writing, including some terribly flowery dialogue. And Tomita is a real find, a sensitive actress we can hope to see more of in the future.
On the whole, "Come See the Paradise," rated R for profanity (which is overdone and seems anachronistic in this context), violence, sex and nudity, is worth seeing but should have been better.