Turtle Beach

source: Turtle Beach

Turtle Beach

Following the fall of Saigon (1975), boat people arrived by the thousands on the shores of, among other places, Turtle Beach in Malaysia. "Turtle Beach" attempts to tell that story while weaving in side plots having to do with a Vietnamese woman (Chen) who married money and throws it at the problem while trying to reunite with her children and an Aussie reporter (Sacchi) who wants to do a story about the boat people which the Malaysian government wants to suppress. The film plays out mechanically with two dimensional characters and clumsy attempts to spice it up with a dash of romance and sex. A mediocre (docu)drama only for the hard up couch potato. Note - The Malay Vietnamese boat people colonized Bidong Island not far from Tioman Island (until 1991), filming location for "South Pacific". "Turtle Beach" was not filmed in Malaysia.

It was about 3:30 AM and I saw this and it just hit the spot. Half way through I thought I should probably go to bed, but I wanted to see what happened too much. I don't regret staying. In many respects like Hotel Rwanda it gives people an outline of the suffering going on those times as well as informing people who may have not known about it before. It makes me want to know more what was happening and what caused this devastation. If it has errors It doesn't matter because It doesn't affect the impact it has on the audience and that that brings the impact isn't untrue. I find it hard to doubt any film with this sort of documentary content, you cannot suggest that this type of content is useless against a totally fictional comedy.