If I called The Liar and His Lover "old", then Hot Road is something between young and old. Hot Road is a 2014 Japanese movie which is starred by Rena Nounen as Kazuki Miyachi-- lead female-- and Hiroomi Tosaka as Hiroshi Haruyama--lead male. Hot Road is the movie adaptation of Hotto Rodo by Taku Tsumugi.
I watched this movie by accident and quickly got drawn into it. The movie tells a love story between Kazuki Miyachi and Hiroshi Haruyama.But here are the twists, Hiroshi is not an ordinary boy. He is a member of motorcycle gang "Nights" and portrayed as a troubled kid. Kazuki, on the other hand, is an ordinary junior high school girl who has a family problem. Kazuki believes that her mother doesn't love her-- or even expecting Kazuki in her life-- and only thinks of her boyfriend and herself, resulting in a rebellion on Kazuki side when she finally meets Hiroshi and takes things seriously.
As someone who loves a sweet movie, I can tell you that this movie can be categorized as very sweet. Just like any other movies, you can predict some of the scenes but it is always fun to watch the scenery and how the characters finally get in those scenes. In Kazuki and Hiroshi's situations, the "expected" scenes -- or plot-- are on how they meet and how Kazuki thinks of Hiroshi as someone who hides behind "rough" cover. In these scenes, I somehow got a glimpse of how the manga portrays Hiroshi and if I read the manga, I know I will be swayed just like what Kazuki does.
In some scenes, you can find the heartwarming -- at least in women's point of view, they are-- scenes on the young couple. The heroic saving of Kazuki by Hiroshi, the unexpected first kiss, Hiroshi's unknown confession of his feeling, their interactions just after they got in a relationship. And what makes me forget the lack of the movie, the scene when Kazuki and Hiroshi are out to buy ingredients for breakfast. God. That is just so cute. The way they stick to each other-- Hiroshi especially! I have to admit that I am swooned deeply by that scene.
The other thing that I like from this movie is the fact that even though the movie's plot is kind of ordinary (a girl who falls in love with the bad guy), Kazuki has unexpected actions. Starting from the kiss until the scene in the hospital where she apologized to herself until the realistic ending (or was it? I sense something is just weird with what Hiroshi does in the ending).
Anyway, I appreciate this movie to not suddenly (and magically) heal Hiroshi from his paralyzation after his critical accident.
However, as a heavy themed movie-- they do bring motorcycle gang after all-- the movie lacks the "roughness" of how the motorcycle gang operates. Even the fights just felt... unreal for me as an audience. Don't get me wrong, my country has a lot of movies where they don't fight for real and the audience just know they are fake and that kind of feelings are what I got from watching the fights in Hot Road. They just don't seem into it and not as rough as it should be-- it is a gang after all, like seriously!
Well, maybe it is because the target audience is female teenagers therefore the production teams are only focused on the relationship? I don't know.
This lack, however, is able to be controlled by doing something that I-- once again-- didn't expect. Narration. The movie is full of narrations that I would have missed important moments if I don't pay attention to the subtitle. There are some good quotations here and there but don't get it wrong, there are some cringy quotations as well.
I would gladly recommend this movie for those who are able to handle sweet things which are just too intense.
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