Hell of a night
2019-08-23
N/A
89 min
Lonely, unstable gas station attendant Melinda is tired of being overshadowed by her more confident, outgoing co-worker Sheila. When the gas station is held up at gunpoint by Billy, a desperate man in need of quick cash, Melinda finds an opportunity to make a connection with the robber, regardless of who gets hurt.
Does that "Starts in the middle of the action the flashes back to the start" thing that crops up sometimes, which I don't really like in movies. I think it works well for the ocassional episode of television and sometimes works out in mystery films, but even then, usually not. In a regular movie it mostly just feels like either they didn't have faith that their movie could keep audiences interested until the action kicks off later on, or they just can't figure out a decent way to start their movie off. Maybe both.
Anyway, trying to pass off Josh Hutcherson as a brutish bad boy is fuckin' laughable and this whole thing is woefully under-explored. Can't think of anything quite like it I've seen before though, so points for that.
Final rating:★★½ - Had a lot that appealed to me, didn’t quite work as a whole.
So, the slightly amateurish "Billy" (Josh Hutcherson) decides to rob a gas station staffed by two girls - "Melinda" (Tilda Cobham-Harvey) and "Sheila" (Suki Waterhouse). The former girl is a bit strange, subdued, reticent even; her colleague far more confident with men but when the heist happens "Melinda" decides that this might be a time to assert herself with the young man. What now ensues borders on slapstick at times as she manages to take him hostage, sellotapes him to a chair (whereupon she tries to have sex with him...!) before, well - you really have to watch it. It has some quite surreal moments. Handsome Harry Shum Jr. turns up now and again as an wholly ineffective local cop and the whole thing, though pretty basic on both production and writing levels, is actually quite a quirky and watchable effort from Mike Gan that could maybe have lost ten/fifteen minutes of character and scenario establishment, but is still worth a watch.
