Watch Perth: The Geylang Massacre For Free

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Sorry, this movie sucks

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

A surprising film to come out of the country we think of as so squeaky clean. Certainly Singapore is not all fancy shops and malls but although when I visited, I saw plenty that was not as the brochures illustrate, I got no impression of such an underbelly as is portrayed here. Initially this is very difficult to watch. We are not sympathetic with the looser and wife abuser that is, Harry, played by Lim Kay Tong, with some gusto one must admit and we struggle at first with the English variants and sparse subtitles. Nevertheless as we move on and especially with the entry of the bad man's friend, played by A. Panneeirchelvam, we do get a sense that something rather ambitious is being attempted here. It is not entirely successful but the director deserves credit for trying to bring out the fascinating undercurrents in this unique country.

I don't know why people bother comparing the movie to Taxi Driver. That's not going to help you appreciate or study the movie. That's just gonna make you play Spot The Difference, which will make you pretty restless because there are lots of differences. The restless audience is not an attentive audience.And oh, I don't understand why it's been tauted as "Taxi Driver in Singapore" either. Talk about bad marketing, they tell you what to think even before you see the movie! These rants aside, Perth is a movie about a simple man who wants to live the simple life. Indeed, you will find many nicely shot scenes in the movie and you will also hear the plink-pinks of the lonely piano piece that is its theme. These things may or may not work for you but Perthdeserves some merit. I may have given the movie four stars, but that's only my opinion... I say it deserves merit, because it is the first movie made about the pioneer generation of Singapore.It's the raw story of a 51 year old man, who feels this place doesn't care for people like him. It's the raw story of a man who is raw in the way he deals with things and often, people. Just like the society and government he claims that does not care enough for him and the lesser-educated generation of his time.Overall, the pace is not too bad, but a little uneven. Music is nothing special, you won't hear much more than the lonely piano. Which can be problematic, even if this was what the director intended, for the loneliness to seep through from the emptiness visually and aurally. This is mostly due to lead actor Lim Kay Tong, who well, over-acted big time. His voice is what you will be hearing a lot, this man literally tries to spit out rage. The bigger problem with his over-acting is not his speech though, but with he chooses to use his body. Frankly, it can sometimes become quite laughable, which I am sure is not what the director intended.I also have a problem with the violence. Don't get me wrong, I love violence. Which is why I have a problem with how the violence is portrayed. Why did Tartan buy this movie? How is Perth "Extreme Asian Cinema"? (Again, bad marketing, because Perth is just about as Extreme as it is parallel to Taxi Driver.) Trust me when I say the "violence" is totally unbelievable and phony, though perhaps towards the ending it became a little bit more realistic. The blood on Angry Boy Lee's hand after teaching the "ang mohs" a lesson was a nice touch, though.I will end by describing my favourite scene. It's a scene near the ending and by the way, I think the resolution of Harry's final fight was probably the best thing in the whole movie. The best thing about the best thing in the whole movie, for me, would be Harry seeing Mai one last time. That really ties up things nicely. The rest of the ending, I'm not sure if I could say I liked.

"Perth" shouldn't be taken lightly. It is a film that will sear itself into your memory with its unforgiving portrayal of Harry Lee, a local denizen in every sense of the word.What is it to be Singaporean? Cash, Car, Credit, Chicks and Condo. Harry Lee lacks all of this, but he has dreams of immigrating to Perth, and that makes him the quintessential Singaporean on the wrong side of the income bracket. Harry Lee goes on and on about Perth. Whenever a mishap befalls him or problems abound, he says, "its okay. Don't worry about me. I've got a plan – I'm going to migrate to Perth! Leave all this behind." And like tomorrow never comes, you know that Harry will never go to Perth. It's the proverbial castle in the sky.The film is like an extension of Harry Lee's soul, which is interesting because he gives so little. One is cloudy about his past, which reveals itself only when necessary. He was in the merchant army, a security guard, a taxi driver and worked for a pimp. "I'm just a simple man, who wants a simple life," he often says.He is also fond of expressing his loathing of unfaithfulness, and even names a dog he finds in the park "Faithful". His wife is an unfaithful gambling addict, while his son is ashamed of him, and even excludes him from his wedding. The dialogue has a habit of revolving around these three things – the simple life, migrating to Perth, and faithfulness, like a broken recorder always tripping. One feels the claustrophobia of Harry's life, a life he's dug himself 51 years too deep into, has nothing to show for it, and at the same time, nothing to go look forward to except the illusion of Perth. But through this, he has two friends. Selvan, himself an ex-army guy turned taxi-driver, and Angry Boy, his ex-supervisor. Their conversations are strictly Singaporean, occurring in coffee shops with common slang like "I salute you brudda!" that abounds. Through Angry Boy, Harry gets a job under a pimp as a driver. There, he sympathises with a Vietnam prostitute who reminds him of a girl he once loved. The details of this mystery girl remains, well, a mystery, but that's Harry Lee for you. He loathes himself and sees no value in remembering his past.This is where the Taxi-Driver references come in. While the actions of the characters may be similar (Harry Lee, like Travis Bickle, wants to free the girl of her slavery), their motivations are worlds apart. While Travis is just a bit crazy, Harry is every bit sane and all his actions practically rational, though sometimes ethically skewed.Though I've left a lot out, in a nutshell, Angry Boy promises Harry the girl's freedom. Pimpboss doesn't allow this, and Harry goes on a particularly brutal and gory alcohol-fueled rampage with a parang and a corkscrew. He frees the girl, but at the cost of his own life as well as four others, and all this happening a week before he's supposed to leave for Perth. Personally, I cannot imagine Harry ever really going to Perth. Perth is, to him, a state-of- mind, not a physical location. Its just he didn't know that difference.I'd like to believe the final shot, an up-ward aerial pan of Harry's lifeless limp body in the backyard of a Geylang pimphouse, is in fact Harry's soul is going to heaven, because despite his outward toughness, Harry is a just good soul caught up in a bad life.Watching the ending, I wondered what it would be like if such an incident really happened in real life. Harry Lee would be vilified in the papers- condemned for his lack of achievements ("I'm sorry my father achieved so little in his life," lamented his cocksure son), his dodgy career history and wife-beating habits. His motivations would be skewed and he would be sold, like a prostitute, as a good-for-nothing gang member. But "Perth" makes no judgments on Harry, and doesn't try to make him a pariah, hero or villain. It doesn't paint Harry's actions (beating his wife, freeing a prostitute, getting drunk) in any emotional light. It just shows Harry as a common everyman who just wants the simple life that went horribly wrong for no explicable and avoidable reason. And that's something everyone can identify with. While I feel the film would benefit from more economy, both of scenes and sounds, it still stands as one of the best films I've watched in recent memory. Watch "Perth" because it is a landmark Singaporean-made film that transcends Singapore, but doesn't forget it either. Watch "Perth" because this review doesn't even begin to do it any justice.

I saw this at Rotterdam Film Festival. I didn't know what to expect after hearing the storyline and Taxi Driver links. I have to say that while there are links to Taxi Driver, this film is something original of which I did not know were being created in conservative Singapore. The photography is great, and Lim Kay Tong give an outstanding performance of a troubled man nearing retirement who's idealistic goal of a simple life is something we can all relate too. I found the ending quite violent, which might upset some viewers, but it has one of the strongest character developments I've seen. It was one of my favorite films at the festival. I truly hope this gets distributed here in the US both in theaters and DVD.