The Good Lie

Plot synopsis:
During the Second Sudanese Civil War, siblings Mamere, Paul, Jeremiah, Theo, Daniel and Abital escape after their families and village are massacred. After numerous days of walking in the wilderness, they join a group of refugees but leave after they are caught by enemy soldiers and many people are killed. After sleeping in the grassland, Mamere wakes up and spots two enemy soldiers approaching them. Theo hides the rest of the siblings in the grass and lies to the soldiers that he is alone. He is taken in custody with the soldiers. The group eventually arrives at a Sudanese refugee camp in Nairobi, Kenya, where Daniel succumbs to disease and dies. Thirteen years later, among the thousands in the camp, the siblings win for relocation to the United States.
On arrival in New York City, Abital is unexpectedly told that she is to leave for Boston, where a family awaits. As their sister tearfully leaves, Jeremiah, Mamere and Paul board the flight to Kansas City, where they meet Carrie Davis, a brash employment counselor, who helps them find jobs, and Pamela, who provides them their house and support. Jeremiah works at a grocery store and teaches Sunday school at a local church, but later quits the job because he was caught giving old food to a homeless person rather than throwing it away. Paul works at a factory and makes friends with his co-workers, where he is exposed to drugs. Mamere takes two jobs as a store clerk and a security guard to pay for schooling, as he aspires to become a medical doctor. Mamere eventually convinces Carrie to help them bring back Abital; on Christmas Eve, Carrie arrives at their home with Abital and the Lost Boys of Sudan celebrate their birthday on January 1, as they had never known the date when they were born.
Abital receives an anonymous letter stating that someone entered the refugee camp in Kenya searching for the group. Thinking it is Theo, Mamere travels to Nairobi and searches the refugee camp after they tell him that Theo is not registered. After meeting James, an old friend, he is reunited with Theo the next day. Mamere tries to get immigration papers to multiple embassies and fails, but tells Theo that the "task" was done. At the airport, Mamere reveals to Theo that he could not get him a passport and instead gives Theo his own passport - a deception that is the 'good lie'. After a tearful farewell, Theo leaves and is embraced by his family upon arrival in the United States; Mamere remains in Kenya and works at the camp hospital.

Tags: cute

Review:
Acting wise, Whiterspoon's work is great in this movie, realistic and never overwhelming and so Corey Stoll does a great job.But I was greatly pleased with the excellent performance of Arnold Oceng, all the Sudanese actors in the movie, all former refugees, and the stunning newbie Kuoth Wiel.Overall, I'd suggest to bring your preteens to watch this movie: it would set an example on how family and value should never be forgotten no matter how hard life gets.Thank you..
Also, just when you're thinking you're watching a movie starring Reese Witherspoon, the accompanying cast of Sudanese refugees steal the show.
Great story, great directing, great cast, and great acting all around.'A Good Lie" was possibly the best movie at TIFF this year..
It centers around a group of young Sudanese refugees living in the Kakuma Refugee Camp, in Kenya, who are selected after 13 years at the camp to participate in a relocation program to America, which became known at the time as the "Lost Boys of Sudan".
Actually, they will be sponsored and under the auspices of the Faith Based Charities organization once they arrive in the U.S.A..The first part of the movie can be difficult to watch, as it depicts the horrors of the Sudanese Civil War, and how these surviving children saw their families killed by invading troops.
The remainder of the film depicts the culture shock awaiting them in Kansas City as they relocate to America.Reese Witherspoon is superb, as usual, as Carrie Davis, an employment counselor assigned to help the new arrivals find local jobs as soon as possible, but who will also become more involved in their well being.
The group includes Arnold Oceng, as Mamere, Ger Duany, as Jeremiah, Emmanuel Jal, as Paul, and Kuoth Weil, as Abital.The film was directed by Canadian filmmaker Philippe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar), and written by Margaret Nagle.By the way, there is a well presented documentary on this exact subject called "Lost Boys of Sudan", which I viewed in the last year or so, that you may want to check out.In summary, I thought this movie had heart and was able to illustrate the ravages of war, but then show what can happen when people are given a second chance in life..
The only thing I had heard was a bit of Oscar buzz concerning Reese Witherspoon.I found the movie very interesting and moving, comical at times, yet sad as well.
Actress turned Emmy Award winning writer, Margaret Nagle spent years honing her above-average script for this interesting fact-based film.More remarkable are the performances of some of the Sudanese cast members (including the juniors), whose own life experiences reflect the difficulty of survival, against deadly odds in this war-torn nation.
Some maybe too cynical to accept certain situations within this productions artificial interpretation of reality, but the writers have clearly attempted to uphold enough integrity to allow most viewers a genuine understanding of what those less fortunate have to endure.British born Ugandan actor Arnold Oceng shows how essential good casting is for bringing life and commitment to a production of this stature.
In fact, there's just such a lie embedded in the marketing campaign for Philippe Falardeau's earnest if occasionally overwrought film: that Reese Witherspoon is the star and central character of the movie.
Instead, her top billing for the film will bring attention to the far worthier and more riveting story of the Lost Boys of Sudan, refugees to America from a land brutally torn apart by civil war.The lives of the children of Sudan are fraught with dangers and horrors - before the age of twelve, they endure war, famine, death and deprivation, with only the faint prospect of leaving their country to start afresh somewhere new.
Mamere is helpless to prevent the bureaucracy of the system from taking his sister to another state in America, and culture shock lingers in every corner and around every turn.It's easy to see why Falardeau was asked to make his English- language debut with The Good Lie. His previous effort, the bittersweet Monsieur Lazhar, dealt impressively with issues of displacement, loss and identity, and won him an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in the process.
He understands the irony facing these young men: the notion that they've lived through guns and hunger, only to be flummoxed by bureaucrats and capitalism.The film could easily have tipped over into a self-congratulatory farce, painting Carrie Davis (Witherspoon) - the boys' employment agent - as the pretty white-girl saviour of these savages from the third world.
He finds these tragic contradictions in the wide-eyed manner in which they respond to their new homeland: the way Jeremiah revolts at the casual, easy wastage of produce in the supermarket where he stocks the shelves, and the manner in which these boys simply cannot believe that Carrie is genuinely taking care of herself with neither father, husband, brother nor son on hand.Coupled with the very good work done by Falardeau's young cast (especially Oceng and Wiel), it becomes almost easy to overlook The Good Lie's relatively predictable script by Margaret Nagle.
There's nothing wrong with that, per se, but it does mean that the fairly optimistic fiction of the film winds up being all too easily separated from the far gloomier facts of the matter.That being said, if what you'd prefer is a grittier, less starry- eyed version of events, there are documentaries - such as Lost Boys Of Sudan - which touch on the same issues and history with less of the Hollywood gloss and sparkle.
The first part follows the Sudanese children who have lost everything and are seeking safety.The second part is a gentle but well-observed satire, marking the absolutely typical inhumanity and su-bnormality of many Americans who have never even left the state they were born in, their utter lack of any understanding of another culture, much less how strange everything is for these refugees from a very different world.
It talks about something that has gone unspoken of for far too long and, I believe that telling a real story through fictitious characters is a very intelligent way to inform the western world of the crisis that has been going on for decades without making the audience feel like they are watching a documentary.
Hollywood is so desensitized, it just doesn't know a good thing when it sees it.An incredibly touching movie based on the real life stories of many Sudanese children who fled their war-torn country in the early 80s.
Anyway, this story is so inspiring, beautiful, uplifting and heart-felt, that there's no way you can be human and not cry at least a few times during the movie.Hollywood overlooks the good ones time and time again.
I had tears of joy, tears of deep sympathy for the pain of cultural shock, tears for the unimaginable hardships of the real situation that the Sudanese refugees experienced, and tears for the misguided and unappreciative ways of the current first-world societies, especially America.Every citizen of the planet should see this film, because it is humbling, it allows us to take a glimpse of a life unimaginable to us, and it makes us appreciate.
"The Good Lie" is a drama movie in which we watch the fight of Sudanese to survive in the start and after how they resettle in America.
Especially this movie focuses on a group of Sudanese refugees who arrive in Kansas City, Missouri for a new start.I liked this movie because it is based on true facts and because it shows us what difficulties and obstacles had to pass all these people in order to just feel safe.
Equally good was also the interpretation of Arnold Oceng who played a Sudanese refuge called Mamere.Finally I believe that "The Good Lie" is a very good movie and worth watching because it is a lesson of life.
If more people could experience the beauty in the spirit of the Lost Boys of Sudan there would likely be a stronger push toward putting an end to racially motivated killings that spread across the media daily.The film takes place in Africa first, during the Sudanese civil wars of the 1980s.
The staggeringly beautiful manner n which these young people honor every one they meet with manners that many of us are beginning to see as a lost art along with their faith and perseverance in the face of physical odds in Africa and political nonsense in America makes each of the actors radiant – Arnold Oceng as Mamere, Ger Duany as Jeremiah, Kuoth Wiel as Abital, Emmauel Jal as Paul, and Femi Oguns as Theo – each of whom is either a refugee or the child of a refugee from Sudan.
In the end I found the film to be a deeply moving and fascinating glimpse in to the lives of three Lost Boys of the Sudan as they try and create a sustain a new life while still haunted by their traumatic and impossible to fathom childhood..
The actors who played Abital (a radiant Kuoth Wiel), Jeremiah (Ger Duany) and Paul (Emmanuel Jal) all suffered through the Sudanese Civil War in real life, thus accounting for the affecting authenticity in their performances.
Over the course of a few months, we watch the siblings slowly adjust to life in the U.S., complete with job misunderstandings and fish-out-of-water gags.Reese Witherspoon is superb as the free-spirited social worker that becomes a sort of saint for the brothers, but The Good Lie is not just a star vehicle for the actress (who is having a career Renaissance thanks to her Oscar-nominated performance in Wild).
"I have courage but all you have is strength."Director Philippe Falardeau's follow up to his Oscar nominated film, Monsieur Lazhar, centers on a group of Sudanese children who have managed to escape the massacre of their village during the Civil War and walked nearly a thousand miles to a refugee camp in Ethiopia.
After nearly thirteen years of living in poor conditions the kids were relocated to the United States along with other thousands of "lost boys." Mamere (Arnold Oceng), Jeremiah (Ger Duany), and Paul (Emmanuel Jal) are sent to Kansas where they meet Carrie (Reese Witherspoon), an employment counselor who helps them adjust to their new lives.
Both were even forced to be child soldiers and I'm sure their testimony is even more powerful than this film itself, but knowing where they have come from gives this movie an even more inspiring and uplifting feeling to it.
This movie is without a doubt a great piece to watch, narrates in a very good way, a difficult story to tell, which are the African civil wars.The fact of hiring people related to the conflict, helps to connect you -from your comfortable seat- to a little part of these people's reality.
About the acting, Reese Witherspoon plays well, I think she upgraded her kind of films, she should do more like these, I liked her active "make it happen" character and the rest of the cast is really good as well.
The starts of this movie are 4 refugees, not top billed Reese Witherspoon which is on the poster - she is more like a side character, but it is as usually good performance.
But these scenes don't look cheeze or fake as it was in "Million Dollar Arm" - by the time when these inevitable scenes arrive, you are know these characters well enough.Overall, "The Good Lie" isn't anything sensational nor great, but it's a very well made movie, that will definitely move you a bit..
Even the IMDb web page says "their encounter with an employment agency counsellor forever changes all of their lives." Reese Witherspoon is the star attraction so people will notice the film, but she is not the main character of the story, her's is a supporting role, which she does well.
She and I were touched by this inspirational tale of a family of refugees from the African country of Sudan coming to America, post-9/11, to start a new life.
They walk hundreds of miles to a refugee camp in Kenya, where they wait over ten years to start a new life in USA.The television often says there's a humanitarian crisis due to the civil war in Sudan, but I have never really understood what it meant until watching this film.
A beautiful film based on the true stories of 'the lost boys of Sudan', excellently played by actors with which this story is highly personal given there backgrounds.The film delves into the backgrounds of a group of Sudanese children cut off from there village and families, due to the atrocities of the civil war that ran through the country and follows there journey to Kenya and on towards America.The film sparks emotion from the audience from the very beginning and continues to tie knots with them until the very end, as the 'family' try with everything they have to forget what they have gone through and blend with the society of America, and all of the issues America and societies alike have.
Overall Rating: 3.5 stars Cinematic Value: 3 Stars Family Value: 4 starsYou might think that The Good Lie is a Reese Witherspoon film, but she is merely a supporting player in the story of 'The Lost Boys of Sudan'.
J.K. Rowling stated, "There is always room for a story that can transport people to another place." This can be said of The Good Lie, which does manage to transport the audience to another country and help explain the national perspective of the war and gives a glimpse at the culture of Sudan.
The film shows the realities of life in this world, the need to persevere in times of suffering, the importance of human camaraderie and the hope that comes through faith in God. Falardeau is merely telling the story, but does not seem to commentate on the faith of the characters.
While its very much cut from the same cloth as films like The Blind Side and its story reeks of Hollywood sap, you'd be hard pressed to not find enjoyment in this based around real life stories The Good Lie, a film that more than likely bypassed cinemas near you upon release last year and failed to find an audience in any capacity.Produced by the Academy Award winning team of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, The Good Lie certainly has pedigree behind it and with the true story of The Lost Boys Of Sudan as its base, it's hard to know exactly why the film failed so dismally when it was rolled out towards the later end of last year.Reviewed well and rated highly by audiences, one suspects that The Good Lie has the potential to be a slowly building sleeper hit in the years to come and with a tale so easy to like as this, it will be a film that brings both smiles and tears to many different people the world over even though its somewhat twee handling can hamper the films emotional engagement and some scripting scenario/acting turns dampen the films overall quality.The biggest success found within the Good Lie lays entirely on how central group of uprooted refugees led by Arnold Oceng's determined Mamere and Ger Duany's God fearing Jerimiah adapt to life in the land of opportunity in America.
The top billing of Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon is a little bit of marketing ploy here as a warning as she is largely a bit part player to the Sudanese squad and her role is a little too much "Sandra Bullock" to really work.An enjoyable, often funny and occasionally moving tale with call backs to real life trials over adversity, The Good Lie never becomes anything akin to other classic such tales but it's certainly a film worth tracking down.
Its not very often that a film brings a tear to my eye so I have to give this movie the thumbs up.Budget: $20million Worldwide Gross: $3.2millionI recommend this movie to people who are into their emotional dramas about a family who have gone through hell during the Sudanese Civil War and leave there refugee camp to seek for opportunities in America.
In "The Good Lie," Philippe Falardeau, brings the story of the young victims of the civil war of Sudan and their walk for survival (literally) to life.
This film — thankfully — is more about Sudanese refugees, the so- called "Lost Boys" (there were plenty of girls, too) and the difficult assimilation four of them face in the United States rather than about Witherspoon and it also stripped of the Hollywood action and drama elements.
She will probably be nominated for an Oscar for her work in 'Wild', but earlier this year, she starred in yet another film based on a true story called 'The Good Lie', which focused on the orphaned Sudanese children from South Africa, known as the Lost Boys, who came to America to start over and have a chance at a good life.
Reese Witherspoon gets involved with these lost boys from Sudan when they arrive to the United States fresh from 13 years in a refugee camp.
The Good Lie is an especially unique Hollywood movie because it is told from the perspective of the refugees instead of the lead actor or actress destined to be their savior, giving the audience an authentic viewpoint of their lives and ultimately making the movie more emotionally impactful.In the case of The Good Lie, the character who helps the refugees is Carrie Davis, played by leading actress Reese Witherspoon, who comments, "I had heard of the Lost Boys of Sudan, but other than a few news stories I didn't know much.
In the Aisle Seat's review of The Good Lie, the boys were awestruck with commonplace, everyday occurrences: "The movie is a really fascinating look at what happened to many Sudanese refugees, but also at how people who come from underprivileged parts of the world experience the United States.