Perth (2004) | DVD Review

The first thing to greet you on the DVD cover of Perth – other than the film’s title – is a blurb declaring that it is “Singapore’s answer to Taxi Driver“, and that sets the bar pretty high for anyone trying to objectively watch and review the film.

Even the press package that came with the review copy played up the comparison to Martin Scorsese’s classic about a cab driver whose mental instability pushes him over the edge and into violent action against the sleaze of his city. It’s an unfair comparison, to say the least, and it’s difficult to watch and enjoy Perth with an objective eye with such a comparison fresh in your mind. First and foremost, down-on-his-luck Harry Lee (Lim Kay Tong, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story) is not quite mentally unstable – at least not at the beginning of the film. He’s a little bitter about and fed up with his life in Singapore and is working his way toward saving enough money to emigrate to Perth, Australia, which he perceives as a little slice of heaven on Earth. After losing his job as a security guard, he starts to drive a cab and eventually gets a job chauffeuring call girls to and from their clients. Once he develops a fatherly relationship with one of the ladies, he decides to help her get out of the lifestyle, as long as she promises to go back to her family. At this point, perhaps, the Taxi Driver comparison becomes a little more apt, but it would have been nice to have been surprised by it rather than wondering throughout Perth when Harry would pull a Travis Bickle and go all vigilante on everyone.

This second feature film from one-named writer/director Djinn is miles better than his first, the poorly-reviewed and little-seen horror film Return to Pontianak, which was released directly on video in North America as Voodoo Nightmare. With Perth, you can see him developing a personal style as opposed to just throwing a bunch of directorial cliches at the viewer. In fact, Perth won an award for new talent at the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival as well as Best New Asian Cinema and Best Film at the Lyon Asian Film Festival. It’s easy to see that Djinn is a director who is going to have a bright future in Asian cinema. As for crossover appeal, he’ll have to get a little more original in order to attain that.

Lim Kay Tong does an admirable job playing Harry Lee, delivering lines with gusto and using his face and body to great effect. A pivotal scene where he gets thrown out of his own son’s wedding and proceeds to go home and drown his sorrows is all the more powerful due to his strong performance. The film itself is quite a strong character study of a man who wants to achieve inner peace and escape Singaporean life but in trying to do so gets swept further into the seedy underbelly of the city.

A huge problem with this release is the sound. Even in 5.1 Surround or 5.1 DTS, it sounds almost as if it’s in mono format, although the dialogue is clear for the most part. As far as extras are concerned, we are presented with the obligatory theatrical trailer, some deleted scenes featuring a humorous and descriptive commentary from Kay Tong, a set design featurette and two feature legth commentaries, one from Kay Tong and the other from director Djinn.
I was quite wary of watching a featurette on set design, but as narrated by the director, it was actually quite engrossing. For something that casual viewers rarely pay much attention to, it’s fascinating to see how much thought and care goes into creating the sets for a film, especially a drama with no elaborate sets to speak of.

Perth is an interesting film, and quite difficult to get a handle on, especially if your mind is caught up in trying to see the parallels between it and Taxi Driver. Perhaps this distraction was partially self-imposed, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that I would have enjoyed this charming character-driven film more without said distraction.

Movie rating – 3

Disc Rating – 2.5