Eye of the Storm (2023)

What Eye? There is no eye!

Eye Of the Storm is set in a Taipei hospital that has a SARS outbreak trapping employees, visitors, and patients alike within. It starts off pretty quick introducing all of the main players, while also showing us some suspiciously ill people. The eye of a storm is placid, calm. No one and nothing in this movie was calm. We barely see any time before the SARS outbreak and none after. Can you say poorly named?

The cinematography and flow of the film reminds me of movies from the mid to late 90s when the Coen Brothers were at the height of their popularity. (I've never been a fan of the CBs.) I think it was supposed to give the movie a more realistic and serious feel. Personally, I think that was a failure. It's a hospital with an outbreak. The plodding slow nature of the movie doesn't work. The story is insufficient. It does not concentrate on any one aspect of the story line. There's the treatment of the sick and people on lockdown which is barely explored. The investigation into where the outbreak came from is lacklustre. What's interesting are the main characters and how they navigate the outbreak. Unfortunately, that aspect is not sufficiently explored. Somehow the director managed to take all these skimmed upon topics and made a fairly watchable 2 hour movie. Here's the spoiler... ready? It doesn't end. There is no tidy little ending. No rainbow after the storm. We have no clue as to the fate of the lead characters. We have foreshadowing, but no real answer. END SPOILER

The cast sells the story. They do a great job at emoting and make you care for their characters. Out of our 3 leads: the overly caring nurse, Tai He An (played by Jing Huaa Tseng), the spoiled/selfish surgeon (Edison Wang - never noticed he kind of looks like Gong Yoo), and our intrepid investigative reporter (Simon Hsueh), nurse An is my favorite. I found him admirable and An great a job with this character.

I rarely rewatch, but I can't see anyone wanting to watch this twice. The music was good and supportive.

Eye Of the Storm is not your normal outbreak movie. It's not action pack. Hmm maybe the placid title. It's a character driven hospital drama that does not delve fully into any aspect of it's subject. I don't recommend this to anyone seeking anything like the move Outbreak or even the level of excitement from a typical hospital drama. For all others there's nothing to like or dislike. It just is. It's 2 hours of something if and when you need it.

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Strong beginning; Weak ending

What the description on Netflix and MDL, even the move itself, fail to note is this is loosely based on events during a 2003 SARS outbreak in Taiwan. Unfortunately, this is one of those movies that grabs your attention within the first few minutes and then just leaves you with a very abrupt ending. It just leaves you with too many loose ends and no overall resolution to events. This is sad considering the actors were wonderful portraying their characters. Even with the sudden ending, it had great cinematography and pacing. However, the editing can make viewers uncomfortable which I think was the purpose.

Random Note:
It felt like the writers did not want to fully commit to a sad ending or that they lost steam at the end and gave up.

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L'Homme face à un virus mortel

Les scénarios traitant d'épidémies peuvent sembler redondants et peu attrayants. D'autant plus qu'une grande majorité ne s'encombrent pas d'un traitement original. Et on pourrait même ne pas avoir envie de s'y intéresser en période post-COVID. Cela dit, Eye of the Storm adopte une approche différente.

Malgré la dureté du sujet, j'ai aimé le choix de Lin Chun Yang de se concentrer sur la nature humaine plutôt que le virus en lui-même. Le réalisateur fait plusieurs choix, et le meilleur de tous est d'avoir des personnages solides qui viennent porter le film, et non l'inverse. Toute l'attention est donnée au corps médical. L'égoïste médecin, Zheng Xia. Le généreux et bienveillant infirmier, An Tai He. Le journaliste tenace, Zong Jin You. Ou encore la gentillesse d'un chauffeur de taxi. Chacun vient toucher notre corde sensible.

Zheng Xia trouve sa rédemption. Lui qui apparaît méprisant et égoïste va lentement voir ses collègues agir noblement. Débute alors une remise en question. Wang Po Chieh offre un personnage détestable aux premiers abords, mais qui va progressivement grandir.
An Tai He est le personnage le plus touchant à mes yeux. Il est la représentation même de ces hommes et de ces femmes prêt à tout pour le bien-être de leurs patients sans pour autant agir de façon stupide. Tseng Jing Hua délivre une performance poignante et touchante.
Le film préfère les actes aux mots, mais Li Xin Yan possède une scène forte dans laquelle elle rappelle à ses collègues (qui refusent de s'approcher des patients malades) les valeurs de leur métier.

C'était intelligent de mettre en lumière le milieu hospitalier, notamment après la pandémie du COVID-19. D'une certaine façon, l'approche de Eye of the Storm me fait penser à celle de The Days de Nishiura Masaki et Nakata Hideo. Ce n'est pas un film catastrophe, c'est la mise en lumière de l'Homme lorsqu'il doit faire des choix qui peuvent mettre sa vie en danger.
Bien que le film soit un peu trop court pour exploiter tout son potentiel, il parvient à nous toucher, émotionnellement. Si, en plus, vous êtes une personne empathique, il ne fera que vous immerger davantage.

En bref, Eye of the Storm souffre de l'étiquette du film traitant d'une épidémie. Pourtant, il mérite son attention rien que par son traitement et son approche humaine, son ambiance maîtrisée et immersive et l'horreur qui rampe sur les murs.

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Good story about medical professions in a tough situation like SARS pandemic in 2003

"Eye of the Storm" is a movie about the 2003 SARS pandemic in Hong Kong and Taiwan. It showed case the stories of how the nurses and doctors, including the hospital administrators, were trying to cover up the patient zero and the spread of SARs.

It also showed the ugliness of human behaviors regarding life-and-death situations. It started out slow, and the story progressed nicely. It also showed the human kindness of everyone trapped in the hospital and how they helped each other in a tough situation. The heroes were the doctors and nurses caring for patients and their families.

Overall, I enjoyed it and gave it a 7.5 rating.

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This movie is amazing.

I actually enjoyed this movie very much, the acting, the plot and overall performance

I love how they represented how the reality of a virus outbreak actually is and the acting was just astronomical they put their everything into it and i felt like i actually felt what they were feeling the actors expressed their emotion so well

Although this movie can take awhile to get through because everything feels like its going so slow it is really worth it and it is the reality of a outbreak this movie definitely has a good theme and i love how they expressed it all throughout the movie.

I feel like this movie was really amazing and acted out very well. The takeaway i got from this is that even though outbreaks like this are scary esperanto towards the outside world these doctors were trained for years to protect and treat people yet some of them are acting like cowards because theyre scared to get the virus, if so why be a doctor in the first place if your purpose is meant to help people?

Chloe Xiang acted out her role Li Xi Yan very well in this movie i could feel the emotion. But most of all Tseng Jing Hua i see him in a lot of moveis and shows his acting is phenomenal but in this particular movie he definitely did his big one!

I just want to give a big thanks to everyone the directors, the crew, the actors everyone did amazing!

Please dont be confused about the comments talking about the ending i really think that ending was perfect it left us wanting more but we can make our own ending out of it a outbreak cant be solved by a snap of a finger so they portrayed that very well!!

Good movie would definitely watch again

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