The Longest Summer (1998) User Reviews

CONTAINS SPOILERS!!! An argument against schoolgirls.

[ETCmodel02 · 6/10 · 2 October 2002]

CONTAINS SPOILERS!!! CONTAINS SPOILERS!!! CONTAINS SPOILERS!!! This is a film that argues the vitality and worth of living beneath the rule of government, society, peers or even gangs of skirted schoolgirls. A sometimes heavy handed film about a group of disenfranchised guys who suddenly feel alienated in their own country as their employers, the British Military, pulls up anchor and leaves them behind during the hugely weird hand over of Hong Kong in 1997. Set against the backdrop of the largely uncertain and extremely anxiety ridden hand over, from a few months prior to just past the hand over the story arcs through a string of events that force each man in the group to confront himself on some level, and if surviving, to come out changed and scarred. Sam Lee, younger than I've seen him before, is amazing in this. The cadence of the film is often uneven, but forgivable. The filming often feels very impromptu and gorilla. The relationships among characters in the film seem as congruous as being lucky enough to twice drive beneath children chucking rocks off an overpass. There are some fresh visuals to haunt you afterwards, like the kid on the subway with the hole straight through his head, and the hole is an improbably healed hole, and we even get another child's POV view through the hole to gaze down the length of the subway aisle, or the story of how he got that way, the story that turns out to be oddly incidental, nearly unrelated. Maybe a bit too much like how real life works, I dunno. Still, the scene where Sam Lee, after being called a mainlander redneck by the loudest of an obnoxious group of school girls, chucks the offending girl out of the open 2nd story window of the moving bus down into traffic below makes this film worth the rental, not because I have anything against obnoxious gangs of HK schoolgirls (although the director appears to, they are a recurrent theme in the film, and often end up getting done over, a metaphor about karmic rewards apparently), but I have to applaud the unprecedented sudden burst of horrifying action this scene accomplishes. Now that is good shock cinema!

a story about Hong Kong...

[freakus · 7/10 · 16 December 1999]

A group of soldiers are told by the English government that their services are no longer required and are basically left to fend for themselves in HK with no real skills. They drift for awhile and eventually turn to crime and fail at that as well. It's a hopeful tale about human life caught in a society that seems overwhelming and uncaring from the most powerful governments to the lowest knife-wielding street gangs.

An excellent film following the life of an unemployed marine leading up to the change over of Hong Kong

[arlkj · 10/10 · 7 October 1999]

The film is centred around the transition of Hong Kong from a British possession back to China. It follows the life of an ex-marine whose unit is disbanded three months before the change over. Unable to find a job, he joins his brother working for a crime boss as a driver. Unsatisfied with their lot in life, the brothers and some ex-marine friends plot to rob a bank where one of the ex-marines is working as a guard. The robbery goes tragically wrong when they come across another group of (somewhat more violent) robbers. The rest of the film, which includes the change over, follows the events that unfold after the robbery. Although the film has a very dark and sad edge to it, there are sporadic and on-going light moments provided by various tertiary characters. All up, an excellent film well worth hunting down.

A Fruit Chan masterwork

[DanTheMan2150AD · 9/10 · 10 December 2023]

Well, I certainly chose one hell of a starting point for the works of Fruit Chan. With July 1997 bearing down, the sky is full of fireworks as are the lives of these downtrodden Hong Kong citizens, each striving for their own identity in the rapidly changing world. Political and personal, symbolic and intimate, The Longest Summer is no slouch, actively addressing the 1997 handover with emotional resonance and a fascination for urban space told through its most dubious citizens. Shot to look like a docu-drama and integrating vivid documentary footage of the handover, the whole film has a certain amount of street authenticity that's rarely found in Hong Kong movies. The use of relatively unknown actors (outside of Sam Lee) eliciting robust performances only adds to the undeniable strength of the movie's authenticity, visually splendid and effectively scored, The Longest Summer is an affecting, sometimes strangely funny masterpiece. Yeah, guess I need to see Made in Hong Kong now.