Janet (Emmanuelle Beart) and Paul Belhmer (Rufus Sewell) once had a happy family, complete with their son Joshua (Borhan Du Welz). Unfortunately for this happy family, their son was swept away from them in a tsunami. Janet isn't coping with his disappearance very well six months later. When they are watching a video of orphans inhabiting the jungles with their friend Kim (Julie Dreyfus), Janet is convinced that she sees Joshua in the video. Granted, you couldn't see his face, but she knows that it is him by the way that he moves and his mannerisms. Paul agrees with her that if there's even a chance their son's still alive that they should go search.
They start by trying to find a man named Thaksin Gao (Petch Osathanugrah) because he supposedly knows something about the orphaned kids. They can't find him right away, but they do find a guy who says he can fix their kid problem for 1.5 million. They really don't think they can trust him. But having no other options, they agree and hop in his car. Quite a bit more money in bribes later, they end up finding Thaksin Gao. He takes over the search for their son. In a surprising turn of events, Kim just happens to be at Thaksin's house when the Belhmer's arrive. From here on out, the search just gets worse and worse. Before long, they're wondering not only if they're ever going to find their son, but also if they're going to even make it out alive!
So far I've managed to make the movie sounds pretty exciting, huh? Well it's not. This is not a movie that was made to entertain. The acting is wonderful, especially the kids. To get that many kids that are completely untrained actors to do so well is amazing. The jungle scenes are beautifully done. Unfortunately, the movie is still just plain boring. I would also recommend watching it with subtitles as the background music sometimes drowns out the voices, especially in the club and on the streets at the beginning. I couldn't hear what they were saying at all during those scenes, so subtitles were definitely necessary.
There is one special feature available on the DVD, a "making of." Honestly, I liked the making-of featurette better than the movie. It was nearly 50 minutes long, so it was almost a movie by itself. They really did a wonderful job in the filming of the movie. It's just too bad that the plot ended up boring. This was just simply a very depressing movie. If you like movies that are depressing, you'll love Vinyan. If you're looking for entertainment though, I don't recommend you watch it.
