In Alamo Bay on the Texas coast, the local white fishing community feels inundated by Vietnamese refugees and they dislike the "gooks." There seems no end to the irritation they cause. First, they're Catholics instead of proper Christians. Second, they look funny -- except the cute little gals jest awigglin' down the street after school. Third, they speak some barbaric tongue. Fourth, they live according to standards known only in undeveloped, overcrowded countries. (This isn't too well illustrated in the film, but in actuality it probably was true; I say that, having lived with Chinese students in New York and Korean fishermen in Pago Pago.) Fifth, where was I? Sixth, the Vietnamese don't know the formal norms, so they pollute the bay and catch fish, shrimp, and crabs before sunrise and after sundown, which is against the law, and they encroach on traditional family fishing grounds. Seventh, they work like hell, and for low wages.

All this vexation adds up and before you know it the rednecks in their caterpillar caps are roughing up some of the small and slender gooks. They're accused of stealing, excluded from other community facilities, chased away from the fishing grounds, and are finally run out of town by a stereotypical Ku Klux Klan. Everybody except the two gooks who operate the fishing boat belonging to Amy Madigan.

Madigan's character is a spunky young lady. She's nobody's idea of a bleeding heart but she doesn't displace her anger onto the industrious gooks. (Anger is displaced when it's shifted to an easier target; a man gets chewed out by his boss, comes home and kicks the dog.) And there's a lot of anger in the white community. Shrimping isn't what it used to be. Ed Harris, Shank, has just lost his boat because the bank won't extend his loan. Big Government is sticking its nose into everybody's business. You have to have registration numbers on your boats and all that. The white folks have to comply with these impositions but the gooks persist in ignoring them.

In the end there is a shoot out. The shoot out isn't handled with the kind of action and drama we're used to. The movie was directed by Louis Malle, a Frenchman. The pistol shots don't sound like 105 mm. howitzers going off. Nobody uses an ugly gun that sprays lead all over the place like a fire hose gone berserk. The Molotov cocktail doesn't explode in a fireball; it just breaks and spills some burning gasoline over the deck -- promptly extinguished by the timely arrival of the fire department. The gook who is beaten half to death has a face that remains recognizably human, though there's a bit of blood. When a heavy is shot, there is no squibb; he simply clutches his side and rolls over, as he would in a drama from the 1940s.

Interesting questions are raised by the tale, which roughly reflects historical conditions around Corpus Christi. The racial prejudice and the displacement of anger aside -- "aside" because the motives are so commonly encountered -- what, exactly, do you do with a "rate buster"? Psychologists have shown that a consistent tendency exists in workers to establish certain norms of production. That is, everybody on the team works at about the same rate; not too slow, not too fast. That way everyone is comfortable and satisfied with the effort he's putting into the task. But what happens when somebody breaks this unwritten rule? Cool Hand Luke did it while his chain gang was shoveling sand over a freshly tarred roadway and it caused The Man With No Eyes to insert the bolt into his rifle. Here, the gooks run roughshod over the unwritten rules. Nobody likes a rate buster. But the question of what to do about them is neatly sidestepped when the Vietnamese are run out of town and the white folks can get back to a more reasonable level of exertion. Still, it remains a question of interest, maybe more than race and displaced anger, which can be overcome by moral evolution. Rate busters, regardless of ethnicity, rearrange the whole task structure. It threatens to shift the emphasis from cooperation to competition.

While the resentment is easy to understand of outsiders coming in and threatening to dominate the industry of shrimping, the way in which members of this Texas community do it is vile in retrospect. The end of the Vietnam war lead to much bitterness for returning veterans as well as Vietnamese refugees hoping to find a new life in the United States. The good here is represented by the enthusiastic Ho Nguyen, a young immigrant so happy to be an American that it's not easy to resent him, yet war veteran Ed Harris does, representing the bad. How much of this story is accurate is debatable, but it certainly represents a trend of certain communities to commit the sin of inhospitality, the reason that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah fell.

If you think Harris is angry by just the presence of the Vietnamese, just wait until his fishing boat is foreclosed on and ex-girlfriend Amy Madigan befriends Nguyen. Her ailing father (Donald Moffat) tells her to stand up for what she believes, but that isn't strong enough to face the violence that Harris and his good old boys intend to start, through the evils of the Klu Klux Klan. Nguyen and the Vietnamese community also find racism through a really nasty grocery store clerk, although Nguyen's friendliness does seem to have a favorable impact on the grocery store manager.

This is a sometimes difficult film to watch (as all films about undeserved hatred are),but the performance is are strong, and even Harris has moments where you begin to feel sorry for his character. Nevertheless, he's a despicable villain, and there is no way he can get through this film without paying for his hatred. Phone number location where this allegedly happened, it is a strong reminder of the power of hate but how hate can be eliminated when the victims of hate stand up for their rights. Seeing the hard work of the Vietnamese and the unwelcoming nature of the americans, it makes you see who the real Americans are and who the real intruders happen to be.

This story of attacks on Vietnamese immigrants on the Texas coast was loosely based on real events from 1979-81. Shang Pierce (Ed Harris) is a Vietnam vet who hates all non-white people and gets particularly riled when Southeast Asian immigrants begin arriving in his town, and especially when one of them develops a relationship with his girlfriend, Glory (Amy Madigan). The situation gets tenser and tenser as the movie progresses.

Maybe "Alamo Bay" is not the greatest movie ever, but it certainly shows a part of Texas history (and indeed, US history) that unfortunately seems forgotten. Ed Harris looks like a typical redneck, with a short, wispy beard. It is the sort of movie that you should check out if you get a chance.