UNCLAIMED (Michael Jorgensen). 77 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (September 20). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: NN
The theme of faith runs strongly through Michael Jorgensen’s highly problematic Unclaimed – the faith of believers, and how far people will go in the name of a cause they hold dear.
In the case of this documentary, the believer is Tom Faunce, a Vietnam veteran (and born-again Christian) dedicated to finding American prisoners of war and bringing them home again. His cause is Dang Than Ngoc, an elderly man living in Vietnam who claims to be John Hartley Robertson, an American GI listed as missing in action after a helicopter crash in 1968. (His status was later changed to killed in action.)
Ngoc only speaks Vietnamese and isn’t terribly clear on most of the details of Robertson’s life, but he insists he is Robertson – and we’re told it’s possible that his spotty memory and inability to speak English could be the result of the trauma of the crash.
Jorgensen follows Faunce as he works to confirm Ngoc’s identity, but before too long I noticed that certain essential investigative steps – like fingerprinting and DNA testing, or even researching the history of Ngoc’s claim – were being actively avoided for fear that addressing those elements would undermine Ngoc’s case, impede Faunce’s need to find the closure for others that he can’t find for himself and deny Unclaimed the upbeat ending it’s determined to have, all evidence to the contrary.
