Goodbye South, Goodbye

Rating:
Summary: Taipei blues in slow motion
Review: Goodbye south goodbye is a strange Taiwanese movie. Film is about the family relations within a low life gang group.
It is called as the re make of "mean streets" but it is much more different than that movie. It is not a strict made in Taiwan copy. Story is not very central and director focuses more on the personalities of the characters. Kao is the big brother who means business in his gang circle. He tries to make investments like opening up a restaurant in shanghai with the money he earns in corrupt ways. His brother flatty and the girl pretzel causes non stop trouble which ends up with kao alone trying to clean up the mess. Kao is low on moral, unable to propose her long time lover ying. He even finds running a small restaurant too difficult to cope. Ying is also dissapointed and waiting for a signal to get out of this.
Film shows low life gang business as a tricky but not an action packed life. Dealing with issues like local politicians, lawnowners as well as pigs, it is by no means an action movie. Apart from couple of shoutings and punches, do not expect a john woo showdown here. Instead issues go rather realistic, kao's failure in life, flatty and pretzel's dependence on him makes most of the film. Even when flatty is beaten up by a police causin, his dreams of taking a revenge with a gun fails miserably before we see the gun and kao and flatty ends up in jail and only saved by the head of the gang who begs for help from a local politician.
Acting is good, especially kao character and flatty are well drawn. Movie sometimes is closer to a documentary style of a work. Music is extremely good. Blasting modern mandarin pop and rock with electronica really puts some heat to this slow moving film.
It is not a very easy film and many will label it as a terribly boring movie. But I personally enjoyed it and reccomend you If you wish to see something different. Patience always pays off in new Taiwanese films.

Rating:
Summary: Taipei blues in slow motion
Review: Goodbye south goodbye is a strange Taiwanese movie. Film is about the family relations within a low life gang group.
It is called as the re make of "mean streets" but it is much more different than that movie. It is not a strict made in Taiwan copy. Story is not very central and director focuses more on the personalities of the characters. Kao is the big brother who means business in his gang circle. He tries to make investments like opening up a restaurant in shanghai with the money he earns in corrupt ways. His brother flatty and the girl pretzel causes non stop trouble which ends up with kao alone trying to clean up the mess. Kao is low on moral, unable to propose her long time lover ying. He even finds running a small restaurant too difficult to cope. Ying is also dissapointed and waiting for a signal to get out of this.
Film shows low life gang business as a tricky but not an action packed life. Dealing with issues like local politicians, lawnowners as well as pigs, it is by no means an action movie. Apart from couple of shoutings and punches, do not expect a john woo showdown here. Instead issues go rather realistic, kao's failure in life, flatty and pretzel's dependence on him makes most of the film. Even when flatty is beaten up by a police causin, his dreams of taking a revenge with a gun fails miserably before we see the gun and kao and flatty ends up in jail and only saved by the head of the gang who begs for help from a local politician.
Acting is good, especially kao character and flatty are well drawn. Movie sometimes is closer to a documentary style of a work. Music is extremely good. Blasting modern mandarin pop and rock with electronica really puts some heat to this slow moving film.
It is not a very easy film and many will label it as a terribly boring movie. But I personally enjoyed it and reccomend you If you wish to see something different. Patience always pays off in new Taiwanese films.

Rating:
Summary: inspiring
Review: Goodbye South, Goodbye is not for everyone, but if you give it try, you may see how incredible this film is. The dolly shots from the trains and on the motorcycles are beautiful and really give you a taste of the atmosphere. During the film the camera is like an object in the setting that gives you an inner look into the world of Gao and flatty (the two brothers). As a filmmaker this film has inspired me immensly and I highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Not for all tastes, but great in my opinion
Review: Hou's films are very difficult for the majority of people to sit through. I realize this. Still, I feel compelled to give this film my highest reccomendation. It's nothing short of a masterpiece.

Goodbye South Goodbye is filled with long lulls of dead space that are ... with scenes of violent narrative. We feel dazed into a sense of peace (boredom?) by the film's nonaction and slow rhythms, and then every ten or twenty minutes, something completely unexpected happens. It always manages to hit with that much more impact because you've been dulled a bit by the direction.

We get the sense that we're outsiders staring at a different world here (a feeling that's present in most of Hou's films). It's more stunning here because he manages to create that feeling in a modern day setting (the film follows two brothers that are low-level gangsters). Hou shoots scenes through doorways and windows. He uses color filters. He paces things at a more lifelike than movie like pace. Technically, its an amazing film. There are some great dolly shots as the characters travel by car or motorcycle that make the film worthwhile by themselves. Hou seems to be saying that if we want to understand these characters, we need to understand the world that they inhabit. To me this is infinitely superior to how the character responds to some artificial crisis created by a plot.

Rating:
Summary: don't watch
Review: This is one of the few Taiwanese flicks with good English subtitles. More of an art than a plot film even though it gives a very convincing portrayal of the nasty netherworld behind Taiwanese thug life. The film progresses VERY slowly because the camera focuses extensively on not just the physical environment inhabited by thugs, but the style, look, behavior and demeanors of the gangsters themselves. Basically, the camera focuses on each individual scene until you have absorbed every little detail there is to it. If this film is intended for a foreign audience, the director certainly has made an attempt bring the viewer into the foreign world of Taiwanese organized crime, though the cinematography is not well done. There are some interesting shots of Taiwanese countryside along with footage of thug territory; such as dark dirty, ghetto studio sized rooms accommodating five, six individuals, which usually includes their drug addict women, a punching bag suspended from the ceiling, stray cats, etc. Art imitating life, these characters are always out to play their game for conquest and victory, except it's to - con big money, maintain symbiotic relations with politicians, and wage covert operations. If you're already taiwanese, there's nothing new in this film. If not, there's little you can get out of it since much of the film seems to be shot in the dark so it's hard to tell what's going on.