New Port South

The thing about New Port South is that it has kinda a cool build up but just lets if fall over in the end. Its like if you work really hard and save up money for your girlfriends Christmas present and she finds out your saving money so you say 'ah.... never mind Christmas'. If you have seen it, you know what I mean. The soundtrack is the computer- electric drum type thing which sounds like it was almost on a Linkin Park cd. The acting was OK, and again the story was neat but loose ends and actors that haven't been in a high school since Ace of Base had a hit make me wish that John Hughes talked to his son (??) about how to end a high school movie and then did the exact opposite.

This was a one of the greatest movies I've seen in a long while. I is very entertaining for high school students, I might add. This movie is about a 17 year old (Maddox - Blake Shields) wanting the staff at his high school to lighten up on the students. He uses the excuse of a former student, (Stanton - Michael Shannon) who was placed in an institution two years ago, to manipulate his friends (Clip - Kevin Christy and Chris - Will Estes)to help him in putting posters up and making trouble for the teachers. One teacher (Walsh - Todd Field) is their biggest rival in this dramatic, and yet, funny and ironic-twist ending, film.

"John Hughes' son wrote a high school drama! Wow!" I thought as I checked the flick's info here on IMDb, late on a Saturday night, having found myself watching the opening credits on BBC2.

I've just finished watching it, and sadly it was downhill from there on. Arguably you can't spoil a film this poor, but I'll leave the spoilers out of this review...

There's an awful lot of style over very little substance: unfortunately the style hasn't dated too well in the eight years since its release. As for the substance, the film tries to pose an interesting look at the nature of control in society through the microcosm of school-life; but beneath the shiny veneer, a remotely meaningful or relevant argument fails to materialise. Characters are painted in childishly broad strokes, falling into the kind of generic stereotypes the writer's father sought to question in Breakfast Club.

Director Kyle Cooper does a decent job keeping the pace up (perhaps relying a little too much on montages of information, which soon becomes a tiresome device, but at least pushes the story along), but his efforts don't sufficiently detract from the poor script and bizarre casting (how anyone is supposed to side with 'Maddox', when Blake Shields gurns and glowers his way through the part, I just can't understand), not to mention the numerous gaping plot holes (I'm all for creative license, but when the "bad guys" know the identities of the "good guys" making their lives a misery, but fail to act in any way to stop them, you really have to wonder why this script didn't undergo another few re-drafts before production - did Daddy even read it?).

I'm sure a younger audience might get some enjoyment from this film (and all power to them), but they're really better off sticking with Hughes Sr.'s high school output, and if the idea of school-time rebellion is what really appeals, the 1968 classic "If..." is a much more satisfying examination of the subject.

I came to NEW PORT SOUTH expecting a surrogate movie about the Columbine school massacre similar to Gus Van Sant's ELEPHANT and certainly the synopsis in the TV guide stating that a student sociopath rebels against the system did give me that impression but this is a very boring movie where little happens so consider yourself warned

The story is about Maddox , a Chicago high school student who decides to strike back at what he perceives to be an authoritarian regime . The major problem is that the character is underwritten and the actor who plays him Blake Shields is unable to embellish any script deficiencies . You have the gut feeling that Maddox should have the evil charisma of Hitler , Saddam or Bin Laden but he never comes across as anything more than a petulant truculent teenager and it's impossible to believe he could rally any disciples . The subtext of you overthrow one manipulative authoritarian regime only to replace it with another manipulative regime is too obvious which means NEW PORT SOUTH is an entirely unconvincing drama that's not worth going out of your way to see

About five minutes in, and I saw where this was heading. Bunch of high school kids get annoyed by the school's administration and thoughts of rebellion start fomenting. I said to my girlfriend: if it gets below a 5 on IMDb, I'll go and read a book. It got 5.0, so she persuaded me to go on watching. What are the good things? Well, it is a good thing this film does not have a story, because you would surely be distracted from it by the editing. It's like the student's drawing that was torn up by one of the teachers, all the footage for this film was cut up in a freak accident involving a meat-grinder, and left half the stock destroyed, with the other half spliced into two-second bits. Even in a ten-second scene of the local TV news, there are about six cuts and three different angles. And then there are the montages. These are all set to electronic music, which forewarns you of yet another montage, so that like Pavlov's dog you start cringing every time you hear it, which is about every three minutes. Oh, I was supposed to say what's good about this film. Well, the film was shot very well, with a nice color palette, that nicely matched the emotional content - such as there was - of the scenes. Okay, now with the film's major flaw, and it wasn't the story, or lack thereof. The director made that fatal mistake of leading you astray about people and situations, not by clever storytelling, but by being highly selective about what to show about the main characters. That's just cheating. I guess he did it in order to make the central character more likable. But it just became plain annoying. If the story is full of holes, it's no good trying to patch it up by misdirecting the viewer. And often there wasn't even any point to it. And then the ending. Basically, the main villain of the peace turns out be an okay guy, if a coward. Plus it turns what seemed to be the whole point of the movie, that you should stand up for a just cause on its head, by the already mentioned misdirection, and makes it into a point about the nature of revolutions, that was already made, and much better, by animal farm. It also committed what I call the Bill Cosby sin: no matter how things may seem at first, in the end adults are always right, and children always wrong. And let's face it: unless you're me, that's just not true.