User Reviews

I enjoyed this film. Unlike all of the other movies Norcross has made, this one had a lot of internal struggles happening with the characters. Whether that was his intentions or not, I felt there was quite a bit of attention paid to the character development. You have Shawn, the hero of the story who is supposed to be all out military no matter what. He's only in high school, sure, but he can't wait to graduate and go to boot camp! That in itself is a study into the psychology of today's youth. Are they really that desperate to go out and kill people? The other is the young garrison commander that is played by the director. He's an evil, greedy, vindictive prick! What the heck could have happened to him so early on in life that he'd get involved in government cover ups at such an early age? As a Psychologist that has been running my own practice for 15 years now, I cannot begin to elaborate on how unstable the two characters were.

As a movie, it is entertaining about 90% of the time. There is a cool scene with the Coast Guard and there is a nicely orchestrated vehicular chase scene. It has all the makings of a good action movie except that it's only slightly shorter than a half an hour long. The music was very engaging and many of the scenics of the New England coast were downright beautiful. As a native of Maine, I really enjoyed the use of the locations the most.

I watched 'Hero for a Day' this morning while browsing the IMDb movies that are available. About four hours later, this afternoon, I went to the theater to watch Terminator: Salvation. Now I'm a person who likes to give all movies a chance, but being human, I tend to go into indie-films with a bit of bias, thinking they'll be considerably long due to too much dialog - let's face it, most independent films are dialog heavy because they have absolutely no budget! Between the two movies I watched today, I must say this one stands alone as a better movie on so many levels. While the production value of Terminator was of a higher caliber, it was not a better movie - mainly because of content. There is so much more content in this low budget 20 minute video than in that multi-million dollar feature film. How can this be? What has Hollywood come to? Anyway, I am giving the director five years before he suddenly blows up and makes it big. Based on what I saw here, his talent is worth an investment by Hollywood execs. There internal character struggles, the subtly of their dialog, the action scenes - there are indie-films with higher budgets that don't achieve what was done here. Imagine what he'll do when given some real $$$$.

Anyone who truly appreciates motion pictures should pick this up. I just ordered the DVD off Amazon about ten minutes before writing this up. I can't wait to see the extras. I originally gave it 5 stars, but decided to give it 10 out of spite for Hollywood.