The Rocket

Directed by Kim Mordaunt

(Not rated)

***

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Don’t expect big things from this small movie, and it can be “a special pleasure,” said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. Set in a Laos still littered with undetonated American bombs from the Vietnam War, The Rocket is about a 10-year-old who thinks he carries a curse, but that boy “has the great luck to be played by a former street kid—Sitthiphon Disamoe—whose irrepressible verve confers plausibility on this feel-good tale.” A flight from home eventually offers the boy a chance to redeem himself by competing in a rocket-building contest, “and even though you know who the winner will likely be, the material is so much fun” that you’ll adopt a strong rooting interest, said John Oursler in The Village Voice. Australian director Kim Mordaunt “shows a documentarian’s eye” throughout, presenting both war’s devastation and Laos’s “earthy rural culture, with its phallic talismans and animal sacrifices,” said Mark Jenkins in NPR.org. Together with Disamoe’s “exuberant” performance, the “pungently naturalistic setting” lifts this underdog tale “above the generic.”