Review of The Tattooist (2007) by Joseph P — 30 May 2008

My God...what a pain to sit through this film! First of all, kudos to the marketing team at Raintree MediaCorp for pulling off such a fantastic marketing campaign for this film. It sure generated hype towards this film (its typical Singaporean behavior; when it comes to foreign cooperation, they like to make a big deal out of it) but sadly, the film did not live up to its hype. First of all, the plot was ambitious but poorly incubated. It seemed to me that the scriptwriters were rushed to complete their work, dialogs were immature and cheesy. There was no element of suspence anywhere in the film and the plot line was almost too predicable. The first part of the film (Singapore scene) was redundant and it was made to be a cheesy publicity stunt for the Singapore Tourism Board. Nevertheless, the plot was definetly interesting. The 'Tattau' symbolism in the Samoan culture did capture the minds of the audience and gave life to the film. That was the only thing that kept the plot alive, the curse of the tattoo.

The acting was somewhat mediocre if not lousy. Given the exception of Jason Behr, Mia Blake and the NZ extras, the rest of the cast looked cheesy and was solely there for eye-candy. Jason did a fantastic job portraying Jake. Dispite the poor plot and script, he managed to salvage the film by perfectly embody Jake in him. Jason's ability to carry the unspoken childhood truma of Jake's past until the very end of the film deserves a mention and definetly deserved a Golden Globe for it. Mia's performance in the beginning was lukewarm at best but it picked up pace as the story unraveled. The rest...sad to say, but it was as if there were desperate. The actress who played Victoria looked like she had to beg her way into this film as she showed the weakest acting in the whole film. Her fake NZ accent made her lines hard to understand and annoying. The only scene where her acting was convienceable was her death scene. Boy, was I overjoyed that she was killed early in the film.

The soundtrack did fairly well but it did not blow me away. It served it purpose to an extend but some scene were just out of place. Come on, Hip-Hop during a possesion? Surely the music directors can do better?

Overall, the film was a flop but Burger's efforts could be seen throughout. Its clear that the co-production was somewhat forced and the main cast have to pickup the slack of the extras (mainly Singaporean actors). Jason, Mia, Micheal, Burger etc tried hard to salvage the film but it worked to their disadvantage. It made the film looked like its been ripped off from PS2 video game, Fatal Frame III: Voice of the Tattoo and a cheap publicity stunt for Singapore. One thing the film manage to achieve though, it kinda unraveled the typical desperate Singaporean girls's behavior to land a foreigner. Thier fake and annoying accent copying is their trademark and its perfectly portrayed in this film. I would have given this a 2 and a half but upped it to 3 because of the efforts of the non-Singaporean cast and crew.