It is a paradox of Louisa Schein's life that she is fascinated by an ethnic group that barely registers in the tri-state area.

The Rutgers University anthropologist is the country's foremost expert on the Hmong, the Asian hill people who figure prominently in the new Clint Eastwood film, "Gran Torino."

Schein is so tapped into the Hmong community that she was allowed telephone access to the closed film set to interview the actors, and accompanied one of the movie's stars to its New York premiere last month. Like the people she studies -- and champions -- however, Schein is of two minds about the film. She's pleased a largely invisible subset of Asian immigrants is finally getting its moment in the spotlight. Yet she is also concerned the movie serves to pass along some outdated stereotypes about a group whose emigration is tied to the Vietnam War.

"The first reaction is what an amazing thing it is that Eastwood made it possible for the Hmong to be so visible in pop culture. That's really a first," said Schein, an associate professor at the New Brunswick campus.

The Eastwood film tells the tale of a retired Detroit autoworker whose decaying neighborhood has now become home to Hmong families -- including a fatherless teenage boy who is being pressured to join a Hmong gang. The budding friendship between the boy and the old man figures in the retiree's acceptance of not only his changing neighborhood, but of the darkness of his own Korean War memories.

Schein's Hmong friends were also excited to see their culture as having redemptive power -- enough to win over a crabby, xenophobic neighbor like the character played by Eastwood. "They were touched by that," she said.

The movie script has one scene that reads like a page from "Hmong for Dummies," in which a character explains her people's past. (Including the fact that the "H' in their name captures a mere exhalation, not a full syllable.) They were guerrilla fighters for the off-the-books fight the United States waged in Laos during the Vietnam War. That role eventually allowed them to qualify as refugees entitled to emigrate here.

In the movie, however, this past is glossed over, Schein said. She noted the only Hmong males shown with any depth are a nerdy teenager and a tough-guy gang member. "I feel a lot of the plot about the Eastwood character is driven by the fact that he is a veteran," she said. "Yet there is no possibility for representing the fact that the Hmong were veterans too."

Eastwood has won praise in the Hmong community by casting Hmong, even if that meant casting amateurs. Only one of the ethnic main characters -- Doua Moua, who plays "Spider," the gang leader -- was already an established actor. Schein was among a group of his friends who attended the New York premiere with him.

Schein first encountered the Hmong when she attended a street fair while a student at Brown University. Drawn by the embroidery and applique being sold by Hmong women, she quickly became fascinated by their culture and the challenges they faced.

She soon dropped out of school and gave English lessons to the women out of her apartment. She eventually returned to school, and got a fellowship after graduation to travel to Asia to explore the Hmong's origins in China. In the intervening years she has written extensively on their background and adaptation to American life.

The Hmong have a reputation for having a harder time assimilating than other Asian immigrant groups, in part because their journey began from a culture of rural poverty. Yet Schein sees it differently: "They are typically portrayed as 'long-suffering,' and while that's not untrue, it's not the whole story," she said. "Their rise has really been meteoric, coming from the background they did."

There are anywhere from 150,000 to 300,000 Hmong in the U.S., including a last batch of 15,000 the Bush Administration recently accepted when refugee camps in Thailand closed down. Most live in the Midwest, California, or in pockets in other states. There are very few in New Jersey.

In her Rutgers lectures, Schein usually asks how many of her students have even heard of the group. "Typically one or two students raise their hands," she said. "And they turn out to be from Fresno, or Minnesota."

Kathy O'Brien may be reached at kobrien@starledger.com.