I saw the preview for Searching when I went to go see Crazy Rich Asians, and my first thought was how it was the blatant obligatory targeted preview because it was the only preview displaying an Asian face, in John Cho. But upon watching the preview itself, Searching seemed like a pretty intriguing plot, about a dad whose daughter goes missing, and how he has little other than combing through her social media outlets to hope to find out any information, only to discover just how little he knows about his own kid.
Needless to say, I was interested, so I made a point to go see it; even if the flick wasn’t that great, it would still be supporting films created by minorities, as the credits are overwhelmingly names that don’t look like an episode of a CW show, and not just confined to the CGI section. Because, it’s important to me that Asian and other minority-created media actually cracks into the grossly whitewashed Hollywhite, and it’s going to take way more support than just the fad of going to see Crazy Rich Asians is going to accomplish.
However, it turns out that Searching is a very well done film, and I have a lot of admiration for the acting and the creative execution of the entire film itself, from the perspective of the myriad of phone and tablet and computer screens that saturate the vast majority of all of our lives today. The plot is linear and pretty basic, but it’s a good example of how execution and creativity can take basic and make it compelling and engrossing. At no point did I correctly predict any reveals or major plot points, but very much went ohhhhhh and came to realization of several hints sprinkled throughout the rest of the story.
John Cho shows his acting chops beyond being the stoned Harold Lee or stoic Hikaru Sulu, and is convincing as a concerned parent on the cusp of madness, trying to keep his shit together while his daughter is missing, and seemingly overstepping his boundaries by spending so much time doing his own sleuthing and investigating because he naturally feels like the police aren’t working fast enough.
Overall, I was pleased with the film, and I think it does an excellent job of telling a compelling story, with solid acting and maximizing their talent to get the most of out their linear plot. It’s also a scary film in how accurate it seems with the way the world operates, so reliant on screens, and the predictable behaviors of attention-starved America, and the lack of length people will go to, to be blatant hypocrites or outright liars, if it means getting any attention.
But the thing is, this is the exact kind of film that anyone who had blathered on about the importance of Crazy Rich Asians, needs to see. If for anything at all, simply to support film that isn’t just another 21 whitewashing atrocity, but ultimately, it’s a good film outright that can be enjoyed with anyone, and won’t necessarily make people think “I’m doing it to support the Asians.”
However, much like the predictable human nature that Searching highlights, the Crazy Rich Asians phenomenon is kind of like a flash in the pan where everyone loved to talk about how they were supporting Asian/minority film, but in the end, they really went to go see one film, just to be able to say they did. Honestly, in terms of plot, Searching is better than Crazy Rich Asians, but clearly doesn’t have the ridiculous budget or hype train behind it, but the question is if more people will be able to come to this conclusion themselves, or if they all feel like they’ve done their due diligence since they watched one Asian film, but no others.
