worleythom There are no likable characters in this movie.Even the protagonist is mainly just a victim. She shows some tenacity, but we don't really get to know her enough to like her.Shows that Chinese people were scapegoated, mistreated, excluded, robbed, murdered in the 1800s.Shows a poor Chinese father selling his daughter into sex slavery.Everyone the protagonist encounters mistreats her.Not a fun movie. Its redeeming social value, if it has one, is in showing the fallout from racism and sexism.Which is perhaps unnecessary. For a downer, any day's news will do.A movie should at least have a likable character. This movie lacks one.

john scaglione Just watched this the other day on Hulu.Com and was very pleasantly surprised. Great acting, very meaningful dialog, a very touching story (supposedly based on a true account) that was extremely well told. Many people today would probably find it slow moving because of its lack of action, bloodshed, and sex. But i found it perfect. One can feel for the plight of poor Chinese striving to survive in remote regions and the harsh decisions that they had to make in order to do so. The story of the daughter of one of these families and her subsequent forced relocation to Oregon in the U.S. is both touching and heroic. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who appreciates the triumph of the human spirit in the face of hardship. Great performances from Chou and Cooper.

Michael Neumann By 1990 pundits were dismissing the Western as a moribund genre, but here was more proof to the contrary: a thoughtful, intelligent frontier drama (from the book by Ruthanne Lum McCunn) about a reluctant young Chinese mail-order bride who learns how to overcome both racial and sexual discrimination after being sold into virtual slavery and shipped to a remote Idaho mining camp. The story offers a fresh look at familiar Far Western terrain from a unique and otherwise neglected Far Eastern perspective: through the eyes of Chinese immigrants who, as much as anyone, helped win the West. The heroine's rocky path to independence is softened somewhat by romantic interest from a sympathetic (and racially color blind) saloon owner, but even in love she never loses her dignity or identity. Likewise the film itself maintains its quiet feminist integrity, by successfully navigating the fine line between sensitivity and soap. Beautifully shot in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, with careful attention to authentic period mood and detail.

HallmarkMovieBuff Although I haven't seen this since it was on TV over fifteen years ago, its memory came and struck me again tonight right out of the blue while I was eating dinner. I was so supremely impressed with this at the time I saw it on PBS that I have no trouble now remembering the title immediately, along with the names Rosalind Chao and Chris Cooper, even after all these years. So, I just had to come here now while I'm thinking of it and register my approval.If this were available on DVD, I'd buy it today. But it seems to me that what America really needs, entertainment-wise, is an American Playhouse anthology on DVD. If The American Film Theatre can put out a fourteen-volume anthology (in three sets), and if we can get "Fifty Years of Janus Films" in one giant collection, why not American Playhouse?