A person wakes up in the captivity an unknown space. When he succeeds in realizing the disaster he faces, he tries to explain the whole mechanism he is a victim of. Sounds familiar to you? Something similar to ‘Oldboy’? Or to ‘The Hangover’? Well, that’s the great stake of director Adam Bentley who succeeds in his short film ‘Tequila Sunrise‘ to create an unpredictable story, an almost effervescent farce whose cynicism exceeds the standards of a classic (tragi)comedy. Indeed, the narrative complexity of this project is relatively reduced once we find out the ending of the adventures the protagonist goes through, but its great quality lies precisely in the way the director creates a misleading expectation horizon, letting us unconsciously create connections with other cinematographic experiences inspired by our personal action film arsenal. Somehow the victim of the farce orchestrated by Adam Bentley is not the main character, but the ordinary viewer who uses to find a sense in the elements taken from the atmosphere of the films about underground mafia. Thus, no props featured by the director seem randomly chosen (the cars destroyed by “bullets”, the “drug” bags, the “money” suitcase, etc.), just like the gloomy and tense soundtrack that accompanies the desperate gestures of the protagonist.
In spite of its relatively linear epic thread, trying to summarize the plot of this short film would mean to eliminate the spectator’s pleasure to enjoy the whole project. A young man wakes up in the captivity of a trunk, horrifyingly observing the disastrous consequences of an armed conflict that seems to have happened the previous evening. The things he finds during his searches can change his life completely… if he manages to get out alive from this infernal trap.
Even if it doesn’t revolutionize the narrative formula of cynical films relatively inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s aesthetics, Adam Bentley’s project is an alert and unpredictable experience that defies the spectator’s prejudices. The mysterious and somewhat miserable atmosphere that takes over many of the attributes of the violent universes of well-known action movies is so credible that the grand finale of this project will be either disappointing (precisely because it doesn’t satisfy the adrenaline appetite of some amateurs) or totally entertaining. Well, we definitely liked it! For us, ‘Tequila Sunrise’ is one of those atypical projects that fascinated us through the accuracy with which the director defied our expectations, in order to prove that the prejudices with which we often watch movies are the biggest enemies of the pleasure of enjoying any cinematic experience.
