The Killing Beach

Stars: Greta Scacchi (Presumed Innocent, The Player), Joan Chen (The Last Emperor, Twin Peaks, Strangers). Originally titled Turtle Beach after the source novel by Blanche D'Alpuget, The Killing Beach is an exceptionally idiotic blend of tragic history and soap opera. Inspired by the plight of the Vietnamese who fled Vietnam in the late 70s looking for a better home, the film is set in Malaysia where the "boat people" were met on the shore of Bidong Island by locals with machetes and clubs, and the survivors were housed in repressive refugee camps. Greta Scacchi stars as Australian photojournalist Judith Wilkes, a divorcee with family problems trying to land a big story. She hooks up with ex-Saigon callgirl-cum-Ambassador's wife Minou Hobday (Joan Chen). Helping Hobday in her quest to obtain her Vietnamese children, Wilkes is privy to the horror story taking place on Bidong's Turtle Beach. Unfortunately, as the backbone of the film, Scacchi and Chen are--how can we put this delicately?--truly awful (thanks, in part, to scripter Ann Turner's wretchedly unnatural screenplay). Throughout, the women exhibit only three faces, all of them TV-movie quality: horror, righteous indignation, and playful sex kitten. What's extremely odd is the way director Stephen Wallace shifts between the three: following a gut-wrenching scene in which Vietnamese are slaughtered en masse while Scacchi and Chen look on in horror, the story shifts to Scacchi and a local Malay in bed together. For most people, the jump is way too jarring. Alternately silly and offensive, The Killing Beach is shamelessly exploitative soap opera fodder. After it's limited theatrical run and a brief debut on Cinemax during July, it will hopefully also pass away soon in its video incarnation. Audience: Disaster of the Week TV-movie addicts.