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.

Pleasant reviews on this movie prompted me to watch it. I had expected an enjoyable heart warming comedy but it didn't turnout this way. I really tried to enjoy it but found myself hitting the fastforward button from impatience. I've watched some excellent Taiwanese movies and this had to be thrown to the other far end. Poor character development (The sub-characters didn't even have their closure), screenplay, very very poor direction and some very bad acting. The story isn't original although the small seaside town setting is nice plus the focus on the indigenous Taiwanese. I felt the director was really trying to hard to convey multiple story lines across which fell completely flat for me. I don't really understand why the tie in with a mysterious letter from Japan. It made the movie so much more disjointed with the poor direction, acting, editing etc. Should have just kept it simple.

I personally enjoy this movie very much. It even makes people who are not familiar with Taiwanese history and its complicated ethnic layers in the island can reflect their own experiences of any multi-ethnic, multi-racial and cultures of peripheries to rethink about what makes people get together and achieve their common goal. The background love story happened 60 years ago and is complete by the last act of the letters been delivered gives the main story line the depth of history and humanity. It's a movie of universal humanities about individuals and community, personal destiny vs. national/historical boundaries.I personally wonders why IMDb change this film's name from the very common and its official title of "Cape No. 7" in its data base to the very uncommon system of Hanyu Pinyin (used by PRC) in Taiwan. It's not possible to simply tape "Cape No. 7" and find this film in IMDb's database. Is it a kind of cover up project to reduce this film's visibility in internet? Can anyone tell me why?

This movie is doing well on hype alone, but don't go into it with unrealistic expectations. It is a very well done Taiwanese film which is particularly impressive given its relatively small budget. It's not mind-blowing but it is reasonably well executed, certainly better than a lot of the crap that is out there. It has a good dose of (often local) humour and an interesting storyline and several subplots that unfold at a smooth pace. Performances are more than adequate. Cinematography is top notch. On the down side, there are a few aspects which lacked attention to detail despite the 2 hour+ running time, some loose ends which weren't tied up, and a romance that feels a little more forced than natural. Also some scenes didn't really "work". However, the Japanese letters which link the film together are beautifully written, and definitely add an extra dimension to the overall feel of the experience. Locals should definitely go and support a job well done.