Mr. Hero, the Vietnamese drama starring Thai Hoa, opens across the United States and Canada today, August 7. The film follows a taxi driver who stages a fake rescue to pay for his daughter's medical care, then has to live inside the lie once the internet turns him into a national hero. It arrives in North America after an international premiere at the New York Asian Film Festival, and it is playing at AMC, Regal, Cinemark, Harkins, Cineplex and other chains in markets with large Vietnamese communities.

If you only need the practical answer: Mr. Hero is in theaters starting Friday, August 7, distributed by Skyline Media with Eastern Edge Films. Showtimes are listed on the official Skyline Films site and through Fandango. Scroll down for the theater list by market.

What Mr. Hero is about

Hung, played by Thai Hoa, is a taxi driver in an unnamed Vietnamese slum, raising two daughters alone. The younger one, six-year-old Be My, has liver failure. The older, Han, is a teenager already carrying more than she should. Hung is not a bad man, but he is a tired one, and the economy he lives in has no interest in catching him.

The film opens with Hung stuck in traffic while a crowd watches a stranger save a child falling from a building. He wants nothing to do with the spectacle. His daughter lets the man into their taxi anyway.

That moment plants the idea. After Hung gambles away money the family cannot spare, he works out a plan with his friend Tuan and a young neighbor, Vinh: set a controlled fire at Vinh's grandmother's apartment, arrive first, and pull her out in front of enough phone cameras to make the rescue go viral. Donations follow viral heroism. Donations pay for a liver.

Director Vo Thach Thao splits the film cleanly in two. The first half is the scheme. The second is what happens after, when the public that crowned him starts asking questions.

The real story underneath the film

The premise is not invented. In 2021, a delivery driver named Nguyen Ngoc Manh was waiting in his truck outside a Hanoi apartment block when he heard a child crying overhead. He climbed onto a low roof next door, positioned himself, and caught a two-year-old girl as she fell from a 12th-floor balcony. She survived. He walked away with a sprained leg and a nickname, "Super Manh," and became a national story within a day.

That is the nerve Mr. Hero presses on. The film is less interested in whether Hung is a good person than in what a viral audience does to anyone it decides to elevate. Adulation and accusation come from the same crowd, often within the same week. Anyone who has watched a fundraiser go viral, then watched the comments turn, will recognize the shape of it.

This is also why the film lands differently for Vietnamese and Vietnamese American viewers. Questions about who deserves public generosity, and who is quietly taking advantage of it, have been a recurring subject in Vietnamese media. Mr. Hero arrives in North America with that context stitched into it.

What critics said at NYAFF

Mr. Hero had its international premiere on July 13 at the New York Asian Film Festival, where it screened as part of the festival's first Country in Focus: Vietnam program. It is worth being precise here: the film was one of the titles selected for that inaugural Vietnam lineup, not a prize winner. NYAFF's 2026 awards went elsewhere.

Reviewing the festival screening, critic Peter Glagowski called the film a fascinating look at how social media and the hunt for fame has warped our moral compasses, and singled out Thai Hoa's restraint in the lead role, along with a genuinely affecting performance from young Gia Tue as My. His main reservation was an ending he found a shade too forgiving of its main character.

For Vo Thach Thao, this is a debut feature. For Thai Hoa, it is another entry in a run that has made him Vietnam's most reliable box office draw, and one of the few Vietnamese actors whose name alone sells a domestic opening. Timothy Linh Bui, the Vietnamese American producer behind Three Seasons, produced.

If you want the fuller picture on Thai Hoa's career and what this release means for Vietnamese cinema abroad, we covered that in our earlier piece.

Where to watch Mr. Hero in the US and Canada

The film is playing in Vietnamese with English subtitles. Tickets are live through the chains below, and the Skyline Films ticket page links directly to each one.

United States: AMC Theatres, Regal, Cinemark, Harkins, Brenden Theatres, Regency Theatres
Canada: Cineplex, Landmark Cinemas

Showtimes shift after opening weekend, so check your local listing before heading out. Some markets have added special screenings through AMC and Fandango event pages.

Why the first weekend matters

Foreign-language films get short theatrical windows in North America. A Vietnamese title that fills seats in Orange County, San Jose and Houston in its opening days is what makes the next one easier to book, and the one after that easier still. Eastern Edge Films has now brought several Vietnamese titles to North American theaters, including The Real Sister and Leaving Mom, and that pipeline exists because audiences showed up for the earlier ones.

Mr. Hero is also, practically speaking, a good theater film for a mixed-generation group. It is subtitled, so nobody is negotiating over dubbing. It is a family drama with a rescue sequence in the middle of it, so it holds attention. And the question it leaves you with, whether Hung is a devoted father or a fraud, is the kind of thing that keeps a car ride home going.

It opens today. Bring your parents.