The Accidental Getaway Driver

Directing Award (US Dramatic), 2023 Sundance Film Festival
Centerpiece Film, 2023 CAAMFest

There is only one Dustin Nguyen, Asian America’s smoking hot, bona fide TV icon from the early 90s. Thanks to THE ACCIDENTAL GETAWAY DRIVER, there’s a whole lot of Dustin for us to savor in Nguyen’s career-best performance as Tây, a grizzled convict on the run who is torn between his own freedom and an unfolding kinship with Long, an elderly Viet man he has taken hostage. Based on a true story, director Sing J. Lee’s poignant and intense film is equal parts immigrant noir, dreamlike longings of the marooned, and charming portrait of two Vietnamese men, ages and worlds apart, who for a brief moment find connection at society’s edges.

The film title says it all. When Long runs out in his pajamas for a midnight snack, he gets a lucrative ride request that he can’t resist. Except instead of a quick buck, three gun-toting escaped convicts turn Long’s night into a never-ending nightmare. As the foursome hole up in a motel, Dustin Nguyen’s Tây and a fantastic Hiệp Trần Nghĩa as Long spend long days ebbing and flowing from captor/captive to companions, and neither are as simple as they once seemed. As time runs out, Tây’s growing affection for Long puts him at odds with his increasingly desperate accomplices, forcing an outcome no one saw coming.

Sing J. Lee transforms a cinematic setup with the specific heat and Vietnamese faultlines of Orange County and the heartbeats of the unmoored, for whom age, carcerality, and war have all but dissolved a sense of home.

– Christina Ree

Shown in dual English and Vietnamese subtitles.
Phim sẽ có phụ đề kép tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt.

Filmmaker scheduled to attend.
Screening to be followed by Q&A.

Spotlight Film Sponsors: AARP California, East West Bank