The Calm Beyond

Post-apocalyptic stories, it's normally a plot I really enjoy watching, and in some way I was entertained, but mildly this time. The story just didn't make much sense in some scenes. Why would anybody be interested in that woman trying to survive? It's little things like that that make the story not very credible. The acting was okay, not great though. The lack of subtitles when they spoke in Chinese was also a big let down. There was already not much dialogues in this movie, so the little Chinese conversations should have been translated. I expected more from this movie.

It's not too bad for a first full length feature film for short film, music video and TV commercials filmmaker Joshua Wong, but his lack of experience to create proper content to fill in a longer runtime is evident.

While the film's lead characters are sweet and entertaining, it isn't bringing anything new enough to the table. It feels somewhat confused about the story it's trying to tell, for the most part it's a sentimental story of family but then randomly throws in moments of tension and violence. The two don't go together smoothly here, and what you end up with is a relatively slow paced drama, set in a harsh world we know little about, with an emotional story which never digs very deep, and some cliched, minimally appearing bad guys.

With proper editing, this film should've had at least 30 mins cut out, and add more tense scenes, and trim down the mainly irrelevant long dragged out sappy scenes, and have more of the amazing dramatics we got in the last 10 mins of the film. The flashbacks were also poorly filmed, convoluted and all over the place.

The cinematography and score were decent, and the performances spot-on. It's a good attempt, with a failed result. All things considered, this film is not deserving of one's and twos, and clearly not worthy of anything above a seven, so it's a generous 6/10 from me.

Although the film has been picked apart in some reviews, it is still an acceptable watch. Don't try and over think it, just suspend disbelief for awhile. I would have loved to see more films from Hong kong/Australian director Joshua Wong but sadly, he died recently from cancer at 42 years old. Rest in peace.

A young woman survives a tsunami on the upper floors of a Hong Kong building while eating a seemingly endless supply of Ramen noodles. Several scenes show her boiling the noodles with fire. Bad guys constantly harass the feisty woman and a little girl joins the battle. Flashbacks show a traditional Chinese family arguing in Cantonese which had no subtitles in the version I watched. The characters speak mostly in English but it was still an annoyance. The ending is silly and I cannot recommend this film.

Lead actress is great, I like her a lot in this movie.

It has some interesting action sequences.

Sometimes during the movie you can see lead actress in situations before the disaster, I like that.

Decent movie. I enjoyed watching it.