Nine years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a small town in the Pacific Northwest still struggles with the troubling legacy of U.S. policies against Asian-Americans. In December 1950, just off the shores of San Piedro Island in Washington, a Japanese-American man named Kazuo Miyamoto (
Rick Yune) stands accused of murder after his close friend Carl Heine (
Eric Thal) is found drowned in icy waters. As the trial gets under way, with Alvin Hooks (
James Rebhorn) prosecuting Kazuo and Nels Gudmundsson (
Max von Sydow) defending him, reporter Ishmael Chambers (
Ethan Hawke) covers the proceedings for the local newspaper. It's difficult for Ishmael to view the trial objectively, as his first love was a Japanese-American girl named Hatsue (
Youki Kudoh), who later married Kazuo. Now, Ishmael has discovered that, when the Japanese-American residents of San Piedro Island were sent to internment camps during World War II, Carl's mother used their incarceration to scuttle a land purchase by Kazuo's family. This could suggest a motive for murder, but Ishmael is reluctant to step forward with the story. Snow Falling on Cedars was based on the best-selling novel by David Guterson, adapted for the screen by Ron Bass and writer/director
Scott Hicks. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide