High Noon (2008) User Reviews

Too many characters short changes the emotions

[dbborroughs · 6/10 · 28 June 2009]

The course of a school year as seven friends go from having a carefree life to finding that its not all fun and games. According to the material from the New York Asian Film Festival this came out of a youth film project called Winds of September.which ended up producing three films about kids in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. This is the Hong Kong film. Its a goodish film, but it didn't fully connect to me. I know that the flashy visuals made me feel less involved. A big part of my dislike for the film is that at times the kids seem distant. Correction it seems to take a postured stance that is similar to that of many teenagers. Little is said. The result is little connection. For example one of the plot threads follow the events that spiral out of a video of a girlfriend of one of the boys hitting the Internet has some emotional punch, but at the same time I never really knew who the people involved were, certainly not the girl who was little more than a face. Why should I care when the film makers give us little more than short handed bits for each person. Its doesn't help that there are way too many characters with seven boys in the lead, several girls, their parents and teachers all milling about.You rarely get to know anyone even if you can feel their lives bleeding off the screen. The result is that other than the odd sequence most of this falls flat because of so much being unsaid and unconnected. Frankly I had real high hopes since the Trailer, which I had seen on several dvds, looked quite good. Perhaps had I been the age of the kids involved I would have connected more, but I didn't.

a local movie with social awareness

[sagittarius125 · 9/10 · 16 November 2009]

It is a very "Hong Kong" movie which a lot of Hong Kong filmmakers don't do anymore. It's a film with social awareness and consciousness. It speaks directly to the younger generation and the director shows a great understanding of what youth really means to those lost souls a few months before they finished with the first public examination of their life. It's a truthful and honest display of youth in Hong Kong. The angst, the confusion and those little moments when they were struggling to understand adulthood were beautifully shown. The dialog definitely came from a keen observation of the real and sometimes brutal world of teenagers. The acting is very natural. In her first directorial debut, Heiward Mak proved herself to be one up and coming Asian director to watch.