A dissolute American (Ron Livingston) living in Cambodia strikes up an unlikely friendship with a 12-year-old girl sold as a sex slave in “Holly,” a dreary message movie about the general wrongness of child prostitution.
As the American gets to know the girl, he decides to buy her freedom – but finds that rescuing her is going to be more complicated than he thought.
Despite a strong performance by Livingston, the film is sunk by sluggish pacing (about a third of the movie seems to consist of dramatic pauses), straight-ahead plotting and an unresolved ending – not to mention its inability to convince us that anything much can be done about sexual slavery.
“Holly” has been gathering dust for so long that one co-star, Chris Penn, has been dead nearly two years.
In Vietnamese, Khmer and English with subtitles.Running time: 113 minutes. Rated R (sex involvingchildren, profanity). At the62nd and Broadway.