It caused controversy in Malaysia, where the government took exception to scenes of Malays executing refugees.

[2] Judith, an Australian photojournalist, leaves her family to cover the story of Vietnamese boat people in a Malaysian refugee camp.

There she befriends Minou, a Vietnamese streetwalker, who has married a diplomat and together they try to bring awareness to the terrible conditions suffered by the people there.

There were a lot of different voices in terms of the finance-raising, there was American money, and the producers - many, plural - really had very different views of what the film should be.

[3]The film was financed in part by the people who had invested in Blood Oath, directed by Stephen Wallace.

Then there was this whole thing about the disco place, which was actually Matt Carroll's idea, something he'd seen in Thailand... Also the massacre on the beach.

Roadshow reverted to the old trick of opening the show without reviewer previews, which almost guaranteed a jaundiced response.

[7]Chris Hicks of Deseret News: Though its subject matter – the tragedy of the Vietnamese boat people – is inherently interesting and its players attractive, Turtle Beach is so full of melodramatic hokum that it never rises above superficial soap opera... [The film] superficially resembles The Year of Living Dangerously, but is undermined by simplistic dialogue (Chen explains everything the film has already shown us) and obvious plotting (government paranoia plays a large part in the film's twists and turns)...

In the end, the film is little more than platitudes mixed with exploitation, and certainly a waste of Scacchi's and Chen's talents.