Movie 2006.06.08 - Raam

As part of KL Festival 2006, there's some international film screening being held at Tanjong Golden Village, Suria KLCC and at Golden Screen Cinema, Mid Valley Megamall. Now, something has to be said about the local Malaysian's penchant for watching movies. I've been in KL a couple of times, but I never managed to watch a movie. The queues are just too long. On opening night yesterday, I happened to be at Mid Valley, so I paid GSC a visit. As usual, there are long, long lines for Superman Returns, Take the Lead, Voice, Love Undercover 3, Scary Movie 4, The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift, etc. There's one counter for the international film screening, and not one soul is lining up to get some free tickets. The movie? Rabbit-Proof Fence. Maybe everyone here has already watched it before? I doubt it. I got a flyer from the lady, and it doesn't give you any synopsis about the featured movies. Just the title, language, venue, and time. There's a couple of movies in Tamil, Hindi, and Bahasa. I asked the lady if they come with English subtitles. No idea.

With some time to kill, I went to Suria KLCC to catch my first Indian-language movie. I checked again with the guy at the counter if the movie (Raam) comes with English subtitles. No idea. I walked into the theater. Only 4 other people were in there. The movie started on time with all the lights still on. As I feared, there were no subtitles. I figured I might still get the story, so I persevered. Fifteen minutes into the movie, I know I'm in for a bad trip.

• The lead actor has zero acting talent. He's supposed to play an autistic, but he has no idea how it's like to be one. It's not simply staring straight, mate. (If you need any help in becoming autistic, I can help you.)
  
• The proverbial song-and-dance. I don't mind songs and dances as long as they're relevant to the story. In this case, they don't. Autistic-husband and teacher-wife flirting around for one whole song. Does that tell me anything? Nothing. Murder suspect-student with her female classmates having a dance competition with some hip-hop guys at the school gym. What is that?
• Wannabe cameramen. All possible camera tricks in the book have been used - slow-motion, freeze-frame, shifting focus, same-frame-costume-change, jerky MTV-style camerawork. All they did was to turn me off.
• Over-enthusiastic score guy. Silence is golden, and the movie budget is not enough to pay for it, so the producers made sure the sound effects guy plugs in all the gaps. A policeman climbs into the murder victim's house - they play some thrilling commando-style music. The lead actor stares ahead - they play some brooding music. The father grapples with his son for the gun - they..... You get the drift.
• Low-brow humour. Different people have different tastes, but the lame attempts at humour is really bad in this movie.

It must've been two hours later when things started getting interesting. Here's the gist: teacher caught the neighbor's son using drugs and calls the police. Neighbor's son pleads with her (with a sharp knife), but she didn't budge. He stabs her and runs away. Autistic husband comes home, acts out an emotional crying scene, and lies down beside her. Neighbor discovers what his son did, so son shoots him, too. Son heads for the mountains to hide. Sister goes off in search for him. Autistic husband picks up a new faith from some crazy guru and goes off in pursuit. He shoots the guy. End of story.

P.S. Found out just now that it is actually autistic-son and teacher-mom. This just proves how bad the casting and/or "acting" is.