Fridae

Three Needles, a story about AIDS, has opened in Singapore to coincide with World Aids Day. It's a long, ambitious film with several known actors (Lucy Liu, Shawn Ashmore, Stockard Channing, Chloe Sevigny, Sandra Oh) that shows how the epidemic is spreading worldwide as a result of poverty, ignorance, exploitation and cruelty. It is not a well-made film. But if you are concerned about AIDS and its impact on the global population � and you should be � then catch it.

Employing the multiple-narrative Traffic format that has become so popular these days (Crash, Babel, Fast Food Nation), it tells three different stories of how the disease is extending its tentacles in China, Canada and Africa. In the first strand set in China , Lucy Liu plays a ruthless woman who buys blood from poor peasants to sell at the black market. But because she uses the same unsterilized needles, the peasants become victims of the HIV virus.

In the second story set in Canada, Shawn Ashmore (Iceman from X-Men) plays a narcissistic HIV-positive porn actor. But one needs to be HIV-negative to stay in the business, so he fakes his blood test by extracting blood from his bedridden father. As a result of his callousness, women he has sex with on- and off-camera become infected.

Finally, in the last story set in Africa, Chloe Sevigny plays a nun hoping to spread Christianity to African plantation workers dying of AIDS. She becomes determined to obtain medical supplies for them, whatever the costs.

Three Needles has pure intentions and noble ambitions. But as piece of cinematic storytelling, it is dramatically vague and unfocused. Running at approximately two hours, the film could have been made more watchable if reduced to 1� hours. Still, it has a good heart beating in the right place. What the world needs is certainly more films that inform people about the growing epidemic.