“Rosemead” is a grim, uneven drama that aims for emotional depth and cultural insight but too often sinks under its own weight. Despite its urgent subject matter and the potential for a truly piercing story, the film rarely musters the momentum or clarity needed to make its themes resonate. Instead, it plods along with a pacing so lethargic that even its most disturbing revelations feel oddly muted. This is just a very strange, unpleasant movie from start to finish.
Based on a true story, the film recounts a family in crisis. Terminally ill Chinese-American Irene (Lucy Liu) discovers her teenage son Joe (Lawrence Shou) has a disturbing fixation with mass shootings. As her condition worsens, Irene tries desperately to get her son the help he needs to get his violent obsession under control.
The film confronts some of the most difficult subjects in contemporary American life, including mental illness, gun violence, the immigrant experience, and cultural stigma. Director Eric Lin digs into the painful intersection of cultural expectation, shame, and mental health within an Asian American family, exploring how silence and stigma can leave cracks wide enough for tragedy to take root. The film also avoids easy answers about parenting, responsibility, or culpability and instead offers the unsettling truth that love is sometimes powerless against the forces shaping a fragile mind.
Liu takes on an unglamorous role that will inevitably be praised as “brave,” but the performance itself is serviceable rather than transformative. She’s fine, occasionally affecting and often flat, but hardly the revelatory centerpiece the movie seems to believe she is. The script gives her plenty of suffering to portray yet little emotional shading, and Liu often feels stuck between melodrama and understatement without landing convincingly in either. Her performance sticks out, but not in a good way.
The mother-son relationship isn’t convincing either. The characters remain at arm’s length and feel more like symbols than actual people, which makes the climax feel less tragic than frustrating.
Despite a few flashes of sincerity, “Rosemead” is just too heavy and slow. It’s exhausting, weighed down by glacial pacing and uneven performances. The good intentions are there, but nothing about this project feels particularly urgent or new.
By: Louisa Moore
Screen Zealots 