"Who Killed Vincent Chin?" is a documentary whose title asks a rhetorical question since the killer is known.
This is no murder mystery; this film's roots go much deeper as it chronicles the events surrounding the death of Vincent Chin, a young Chinese-American who was beaten to death by an unemployed auto worker in Detroit during the summer of 1982.
Chin was 27 and celebrating the end of his bachelorhood in a topless bar with some friends. He got into a scuffle with 43-year-old Ron Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz.
Ebens apparently mistook Chin for Japanese and berated him, complaining that Japanese auto manufacturing had put Americans out of work.
A little later Ebens and Nitz cornered Chin outside a nearby fast-food restaurant and while Nitz held him, Ebens beat Chin to death with a baseball bat.
The justice system dragged its feet for years and eventually fined the two $3,700 and put them on three years probation. Needless to say, this caused an uproar in the Chinese community.
Would the case have been treated so lightly if Chin had been Caucasian? Or, for that matter, if Ebens and Nitz had been Chinese?
Filmmakers Christine Choy and Renee Tajima use cinema verite techniques to tell the story and interview all the principals, from those directly involved (including the killers), their families, witnesses, police - even the judge who dismissed the crime as not having actually been a "brutal murder."
Their use of comments from observers, along with newsreel footage, is most compelling, but it is Chin's mother, describing in detail her life in white America, who ultimately provides the most devastating imprint.
By the end of the film the question doesn't seem so rhetorical anymore.
Who Killed Vincent Chin?
Maybe we all need to accept some responsibility.