It’s a well-crafted enterprise that leaves its human subject a bit of an enigma, albeit one we empathize with enough to feel sorely disappointed that his tumultuous life never arrived at a place of security or peace.
Free Chol Soo Lee
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
United States · 2022
1h 23m
Director Eugene Yi, Julie Ha
Starring Chol Soo Lee
Genre Documentary
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In the 1970s, a young Korean immigrant named Chol Soo Lee is racially profiled and then wrongfully convicted of a gang-related murder in Chinatown. He receives a life sentence. Years later, journalist K.W. Lee brings attention to his case and helms a grassroots, pan-Asian American movement to free Chol Soo Lee.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Directors Ha and Yi craft a compelling and moving tribute to a man who was by no means a perfect person but nevertheless had a remarkable impact on breaking barriers.
The Hollywood Reporter by Lovia Gyarkye
Free Chol Soo Lee vibrates with this broader understanding of incarceration.
Directors Ha and Yi’s unflinching portrait of Lee is also admirable, as the movie shows the overall effects of a system indifferent to people who fall through its cracks. By staying with Lee and his story, from his early years in Korea, to his later years in America as an injured ex-convict, the documentary shows how the damage to Lee occurred, both as a death row inmate and a reluctant figurehead for the movement that coalesced around him.
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