Alamo Bay
1985 film directed by Louis Malle
Alamo Bay is a 1985 American drama film about a Vietnam veteran who clashes with Vietnamese immigrants who move to his Texas bay hometown. The film was directed by Louis Malle, and stars Amy Madigan and Ed Harris. Future Texas A&M and Dallas Cowboys linebacker Dat Nguyen, who was age 9 at the time, has a small role as a Little League ballplayer. The film's soundtrack, composed and recorded by the artist Ry Cooder, was released as an album Music From the Motion Picture "Alamo Bay" in the same year, and its title track "Theme from Alamo Bay" can be also found on Music by Ry Cooder, a compilation album of Cooder's soundtracks from movies released between 1980 and 1993.
Plot
A despondent Vietnam veteran in danger of losing his livelihood is pushed to the edge when he sees Vietnamese immigrants moving into the fishing industry in a Texas bay town. He teams up with other fishermen and the KKK to terrorize the Vietnamese fishermen in a campaign of violence and intimidation based on true historical events that took place in Texas in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Cast
Production
Louis Malle first became aware of the violent confrontations between Vietnamese refugees and local fishermen in Texas after reading accounts in The New York Times. The film was a passion project for Malle as being an immigrant himself he felt very invested in the portrayal of the immigrant experience. Ross Milloy, who wrote the article that got Malle's attention provided the narrative basis for the film and was given an executive producer credit. Malle traveled to Texas with writer Alice Arlen to conduct research for the film and was so impressed with her first draft he personally financed pre-production himself and was prepared to self-finance the entire picture before TriStar Pictures provided the $5 million budget.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2830457. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1985, 1980 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alamo Bay” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.