Good idea lost in the noise

A Disappointing Continuation

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Ah how to begin.First its too long at 129 minutes but thats the only real negative along with being subtitled.Its a love set in Taiwan between a Japanese advance girl coming to set up a beach front performance by a Japanese male singer but she needs a local opening band act.However if you get through the standard "The Commitments"and "The Full Monty"early sort of storyline.AND that is an improbable love story superimposed over a lost one 60 years earlier with tinges of Casablanca thrown in,another film reviewed here prior, but in reverse.You have to see it to get it.So its worth the time even if it seems silly and obnoxious in the beginning. Oh and the piano music"1945"is as good as that music from"Cairo Time"

Cape No. 7 is a beautiful romance base on real life actual scenario although the actual story was just the letter came from Japan seeking an old address and the rest was fiction but this shows how great the director were able to transform a simple romance into colorful tear dropping romance movie.At 2008 when I first saw this movie I brought a DVD version for my friend back in South Africa with English Subtitle. He was able to understand most of the movie and translate only few subtitle he could not make any sense (Those were you have to be native speaker to understand)By KDGonK

Taiwanese romantic comedy that according to some of the reviews on IMDb is bound to baffle those from other parts in the world. Maybe, or maybe not.The plot has a musician named Aga, moving to a different part of Taiwan and ending up as postman and then drafted into a rock band that is being put together to help draw people to the local hotel. Its a battle of old ways and new ways, with a duel romance tossed in. One is the romance of our hero with the girl named Tomoko, and the other is the letters from 1945 that were in a package our hero failed to deliver which kind of mirrors the main characters.Wonderfully acted, at times incredibly touching, with great music and a bunch of great characters this is very often a magical movie. When its on its great, but the film has a couple of hiccups that made me want to grab the director and the screen writer and slap them around.First the film is way too long at 130 minutes. Had the film worked from top to bottom I would have been happy to watch these people for hours, but as there were times when I wanted to reach for the remote.The other problem with the film is that the character of Aga doesn't do much. His often inaction affects the romance of the story. He drives around and looks grumpy and kind of interacts with Tomoko, and then he's grumpy some more and then he sings and then he looks at Tomoko and she looks at him, but there is nothing between them. We never know what our hero is feeling. Its not the actors fault, its the way he's written. Until the wedding scene I honestly had no idea who the object of his affection was since nothing was really happening between anyone. Then what happens is so brief that you can't believe that a romance was built out of that. (Its kind of a WTF moment and a review for a film called Finding Shangri-la in China Daily mentioned the sequence in this film as non-moment that they feared was going to be repeated in that one. Apparently its not) If you take the romance as a given its better then if you wait for something to really happen, because it never really does. So much of this movie is off screen that I felt as though there should be another half hour just to explain what we're not seeing.Annoyance aside the film is worth a look. The music is as I said great and it adds much of the emotion that the film is otherwise lacking. And of course there are the characters who may not always be likable but are often well drawn. Its a good film that should have and really could have been better.Worth a rental.

The title is what I believe after I saw this movie.Cape No.7 is a great movie and a humble self-introduction of Taiwan. Few that live in mainland China know the real Taiwan. What are the people like? How is their life there? These questions are not merely out of our curiosity; it's more because we care.Movie has always been a good way of knowing other peoples and cultures. I've always been wanting to know Taiwan through their movies, but the fact is movie industry of Taiwan hasn't been doing well for a long time. If you go to a DVD shop(not to mention cinema) and look for Taiwan movies, mostly, you'll find, or the owner will recommend to you stupid little romances with good-looking faces or extremely low-key boring meaningless experiments(usually in experiments' disguise making erotic stuff), but what we wanna see and the filmmakers in Taiwan should show us is a real Taiwan, a real life of the people. Unlike most other Taiwan movies you can easily find, Cape No.7 is not only a 100% percent authentic Taiwan movie, encouragingly, it's honest and humble too, in order that a real Taiwan will be demonstrated to everyone, including Taiwan natives.And the effort paid off. We see the beauty of the island, and the beauty of its people. You may think of another movie that is like a place's self-introduction, The Barber of Siberia. Critics say Russia in The Barber of Siberia is not the real Russia, which is not that good in fact. You might feel Taiwan in Cape No.7 is not the real Taiwan either; you might think Taiwan could never be such a nice place. Truthfully, Taiwan has its good and bad things, if there is nothing good in Taiwan and the movie tells you it's good then that's called fake; if there are good things and people, and the movie shows the good to us, why should we say it's not real? There is a time to reveal bad and ugly and there is a time to show good and beauty. Same reasoning with The Barber of Siberia. At this moment, why don't we enjoy seeing a good, beautiful and true Taiwan and hope there are more and more movies like Cape No.7.