Roads and Bridges


Roads and Bridges is a 2000 film by Abraham Lim about a Chinese-American man facing racial prejudice in the American Midwest. Lim plays the main character, Johnson Lee, a Chinese-American man who is placed on a Kansas road-cleaning crew by his parole officer. The film is about the friendship between Lee and Darrell, a black man who has experienced years of racist treatment from the white co-workers on the road crew. Lee is also the subject of racist treatment by the road crew. After Darrell rescues Lee from a river, the two men become friends. Other actors include Matt Malloy, Soon-Tek Oh, Jim Akman, Emmet Brennan, and Joe Michaelski. It was produced by Marc H. Glick and Lim, with Robert Altman, Glick, and Lim as executive producers. In addition to directing, Lim also wrote and edited the film. The music is by Bradford Athey and Adam Gorgoni.

Reception

Variety praised "Lim’s captivating, though sometimes heavy-handed" film, saying that it "succeeds in large part because of its social intelligence and core of well-delineated characters". The Daily Northwestern praised the excellent performances of Lim and Sullivan and, while noting that the six-year "length of shooting shows in the film’s evolving aesthetic, with some scenes looking amateur and others well-executed", states that the director has dealt with a "tough subject with aplomb".