City Sharks

Like many others, I keep away from local films like the plague. Movies like One Leg Kicking, Sharp Pencil, Chicken Rice War and Liang Po Po have left me with a bad taste in my mouth. But alas, along came City Sharks, a movie starring the very surprising (in a good way) Nicholas Lee. Ok, I admit I didn’t catch the movie when it played in the cinemas. But I was fortunate enough to catch it some weeks back at Fort Canning where it played to a few thousand people in the park. I heard some grumble ‘why are they showing a local film?’. ‘Why don’t they show Daredevil?’ etc. etc. But these were the same people who were, half an hour later, laughing hysterically at the antics on screen. It was funny, didn’t try to be arty, and was just 90 minutes of fun, fun, fun! I loved the fact that something new happened every ten minutes in the film. And thanks to Sharks, I have since borrowed more local films on video. Mostly crap, as expected, but a few great ones like ‘Eating Air’. Is it a coincidence that ‘Air’ like ‘Sharks’ is a road-ie movie? Perhaps more Singaporean filmmakers should make road movies instead of poorly made movies about football, chicken rice, trees, jane’s and sam’s! Good work to the Singaporean (or was it Malaysian) team for an extremely entertaining movie. And thanks too for restoring my faith in local movies.