This film has an incorrect title. It should have been called 'High school monster'.
That's what this kid is.
He's a little monster in the making.
So we have this kid ''Matt'' he runs a click of greasers who bully other kids into giving the money and calling it protection.
Stealing test results to sell the other kids for a price and even going so far as to rig a school election to make him the student body president.
All of this seems to be done with a simple goal of acquiring wealth which the kid doesn't need because he lives in a more wealthy house and anyone else in the entire town. Essentially he's either bored or depressed because his family is never around to spend any time with him.
The movie really wants us to feel for the kid but it's hard to do when he literally murder somebody later on.
Oh yeah, this guy accidentally kills another guy in an automobile accident.
After entering a drag race, Matt tries to pawn a bunch of kids out of money and putting up this gold coin as a form of collateral.
What he doesn't Bank on is one of the other kids has a custom ride that's faster than his own car.
So Matt loses the race, loses his coin and goes a little nuts in the head trying to ram this other kid off the road so we can get back his dumb coin.
Apparently it's a Keepsake from his father and it seems to be the only thing he has to remember him by.
Just to put things in perspective he's father's not dead. He's just out in Switzerland somewhere on a business deal because this guy spends his entire life working and presumably never spend any time with his kid.
Most of the film just follows the antics of Matt. As he goes from one crooked deal to the next. Trying to make a quick Buck any corner he can.
We even get to see him paying off all of his men and getting gradually upset as they fail at their basic taskes. And as the film goes on you almost becomes thankful that most of the movie is focused on Matt.
Because everyone else in the film can't act worth a damn.
Now In fairness Matt's not a great act either, but at least I could believe his character was who he says he was in the film.
Everybody else had the personality of wood and to make things worse you only see them for 5 minutes so you don't get any connection with them.
So we end up with a tedious movie and where we only have one good performance that it's been done by a guy who's so despicable and so miserable that you can't help but root against him in the end.
The movies a little more than an hour long and it feels every minute. It's only saving grace is that the acting is corny enough to be fun without being so bad that it forces you to turn away. And the soundtrack is really amusing too. It's just a bunch of bongo drums and quick beat action jazz music.
I think if they had tried to stick with one theme, say on one racket in the story they might have been able to make a better movie.
Have Matt and his gang trying to acquire test papers and make that the centrepiece of your story or focus on the internal drama of his gang. Maybe give us a little bit more screen presence with him and his girlfriend as the two's relationship goes down hill, as he's trying to hit on this other girl. There are a lot of little angles you could go within the story that I think would have helped out in the long run. But ultimately the movie just feels confused and isn't all that sure where it wants to go.
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