Tag Archives: City of Ghosts (2002

Re-watching City of Ghosts, Matt Dillon’s 2002 crime movie set in Cambodia, has got me thinking a lot about film as a personal time machine.

It’s not a great film, but having worked on and off as a journalist in Phnom Penh in the nineties and again in 2008, for me it’s a vivid depiction of a Cambodia that is quickly changing in the face of rapid, if very uneven, economic development.

Jimmy (Dillon) is a long con artist who begins to grow a conscience after the fake insurance company he’s been fronting forfeits on claims to the survivors of a hurricane. In order to get his share of the proceeds from the scam and escape the clutches of the FBI, Jimmy travels from New York to Thailand where Marvin (James Caan), his mentor and the brains behind their operation has fled.

Landing in Bangkok, Jimmy meets up with another of Marvin’s associates, Casper (Stellan Skarsgard), who informs him Marvin has gone to Cambodia to escape his former partners in the Russian mob who unbeknown to Jimmy put up the seed money for their insurance scam.

Jimmy decides to follow him, arranging to meet up with Casper in Phnom Penh at a hotel called the Belleville. Most frequent travellers to Asia will have stayed in at least one place like the Belleville, a magnet for dead-beat expats, burn-outs and tourists on expired visas, who hang around the bar providing cryptic advice and Vietnam flashbacks to whoever will pay attention and buy them drinks.… Read more