Timothy Challemet, who also experienced a short first love during a long holiday in Italy last winter, turned into a bad teenager and reappeared in the summer American town of the 80s.
The story still revolves around restless teenagers, but unfortunately, although the trailer for "Hot Summer Nights" satisfies the audience's appetite, the main film is mediocre and cannot satisfy the long-awaited fans.
The film "Hot Summer Nights" is the directorial debut of Leah Bynum, and the newcomer director's screenplay for the film was once included in the 2013 Hollywood screenplay "blacklist".
It is worth noting that the blacklist is not actually "black", it was founded by Franklin Leonard, who once worked at Universal Pictures, to avoid reading repetitive scripts in a haystack, improve work efficiency, and find scripts that are very likely to become good works as soon as possible. The scripts listed in it are actually favored and recommended by people in the industry. And this potential and ambition are undoubtedly revealed in the first part of the film "Hot Summer Night".
Daniel, the male protagonist played by Sweet Tea, has a great change of temperament due to the unexpected death of his father, and he behaves strangely and is sent by his mother to an unknown town to spend the whole summer with his aunt. In two accidents, he became acquainted with Hunter, a marijuana dealer who hurried into the convenience store where he worked to avoid police pursuit, and McKayla, the town's boy's dream lover and Sister of Hunter.
It is very common to elicit the protagonists of the story at the beginning of the film, but how to make the character image rich and three-dimensional without dragging the overall rhythm, the director here made a good demonstration.
Whether it's Daniel, who is in adolescence but has lost her father and becomes sensitive and eccentric;
Hunter, who sells marijuana everywhere in the town and does all kinds of bad things, so that he is shouted at and beaten by everyone and secretive;
Or McKayla, whose sexiness fascinates the boys.
In just 20 minutes, the director borrowed a third-person tone to show the image of the protagonists in the eyes of most people with a few small things, and quickly laid out the group portraits of the three characters through rapid editing, and the continuous enlargement and switching of the camera also deepened the impression of the audience, and the vivid characters jumped on the screen in a short period of time.
Daniel took his first sip of marijuana at Hunter's party, impressed by the dreamy sensory stimulation, and his self-absorbed McKayla intrigued and eager to get her attention. So Daniel and Hunter hit it off and began the days of the duo partnering up to sell marijuana.
The boys' unscrupulous business of selling small bags of marijuana to tourists in the town was soon targeted by the monopoly drug lords, and Daniel and Hunter had to join the drug lords' distributors.
The clever Daniel not only completed the "indicator assessment" of the first level, but also managed to broaden the channels of sales, and when the 2-person cannabis business was rising, the confident Daniel also launched a passionate pursuit of McKayla, and Hunter fell in love with the well-behaved girl Amy.
The replacement of red sports cars, the kissing whispers outside the amusement park, the drinking pleasures with lovers in empty bars, the materialistic life of paper drunk fans is shocking under the distorted colors of Polaris, as if a hot and dry town summer day can never see the end of the carnival.
The erosion of alcohol, sex, and money didn't really make the teenagers happy. Hunter, who is reluctant to let his sister associate daniel, and McKayla, who sneers at his brother's unlearned skills, finally discover the other side of his friend/boyfriend who is trying to hide, and the relationship between the three is like a tropical storm slowly forming on the surface of the sea, and there is a crack in the silence.
McKayla resents her brother Hunter for still being a drug dealer even when her mother is seriously ill, and is even more heartbroken to discover that her boyfriend is sinking with him;
And Hunter is not indifferent in his heart, but he is not good at words, he can't really get his sister's forgiveness, and the continuous guilt and shame can only lead him to a vicious circle of more trouble, Amy's police officer father, after discovering their relationship, said that Hunter can't change his nature, evade responsibility, and is weak and incompetent;
Daniel never got out of the fact that his father had died. Caught up in the contradiction of struggle and escape, he came to a strange town, sold marijuana, negotiated with drug lords, made money to drive a sports car, and fell in love with the most beautiful girl in the town, these fresh and exciting "trying to be cool" made him want to stop in arrogance.
As he gets deeper and deeper, he and Hunter, who is beginning to show remorse in self-examination, finally have a disagreement over the sale of cocaine by the cannabis drug lord, and Daniel, who is confident that he can avoid the drug lord's eyes and ears, is eventually not only cheated out of all the money, but also played by the drug dealer, perhaps he is still the teenager who wonders why Hunter and McKayla have different nicknames for themselves, and never really realize what kind of person he is.
Tropical cyclones were constantly expanding on the surface of the sea, accompanied by a strong storm that struck the boys, and the drug lord thugs who were ready to kill people because of the exposure of the incident, hunted down Hunter, who was determined not to reveal Daniel's whereabouts to the thugs. The devastating storm not only devastated the town, but also heralded the eventual destruction of the real lives of the three young people due to the tragic departure of one person.
Pink seaside sunset, a little neon light in the amusement park, blonde beauty's red lips and explosive head, Daniel's heartbroken gallop on the road, the film's look and feel in the picture and scene is very stunning, the rendering of retro tones highlights the film texture, and the rock music that is widely used complements, the retro atmosphere immerses the audience, and some cleverness in shooting techniques can also make people smile, such advantages are clearly reflected in the first half of the film.
Sweet Tea and Female Number One Micah Monroe's performance is equally eye-catching, Daniel's confusion when he first entered a strange town is vividly expressed in his sluggish and dodgy eyes and unnatural body language, while Micah Monroe's seductive eyes and slowly swinging waist fully explain how McKayla can become the object of all small town boys.
The film has all the elements that make the audience curious and expect: the hot and popular movie star, the resonant youth theme and the beautiful and rich retro trend.
But from the second half of the film, the transition of the plot under the sharp turn is not natural enough, the love entanglement is too procrastinating, the inner development of the characters after the turn is not enough, it seems that the whole movie is top-heavy, the structure is unbalanced, the rhythm is dull, the protagonists in the youth and the original family of the lost and exploration of the "self" has also become lackluster, it is no wonder that some viewers have watched the spit "This second half is completely unsociable", obviously the narrative still needs to work hard.
After the hurricane, it is not only the homes that need to be rebuilt, but also Daniel and McKayla, who fled the town. They could go away to avoid sadness, but it might take a lifetime to heal the wounds, and this short summer changed everything for them.