DVD Blackmail Boys

I have given this film a higher mark than it deserves, but before I say anything about the film I will say why. I have seen so much trash given marks of 6 here by audiences who obviously love car chases, explosions and other completely "seen it a thousand times" crap that I thought that a film that a least tries to be a bit less mainstream deserves some credit.

Nevertheless there are as many negatives as positives to this film, when all is said and done.

The premise is reasonable: a young gay man, Sam, needing money for his education, decides to prostitute himself. When his long-time lover Aaron comes to visit and realizes that one of his boyfriend's clients, Andrew Tucker, is a high-profile Christian writer and homophobe, they hatch a plan to blackmail him to get the money which will allow them to marry and to end the need for prostitution as a means for paying the bills. So far so good.

But… from that point on, there are too many negatives for the film to work as well as it might have. First problem is casting. There is no chemistry between the two lover at all. They smile, they kiss, they make love – but when Sam kisses a client he doesn't register any kind of difference between the two. Worse, without being mean – it seems logical to imagine that a high-profile Christian writer with lots of money will seek out someone who is truly gorgeous, buff, HOT… none of which can be said about Sam. Second problem: there have been enough movies made about blackmailers for the two kids to have imagined at least one or two things might be necessary to guarantee their safety. Example: they both go to the drop-off zone. One should have kept the video while the other went for the money. But how could Andrew be sure there weren't twenty more copies out there? He couldn't, which makes it unlikely that he would have fallen for the blackmail scheme. Third problem: the level of acting in general just wasn't good enough to be believable. Andrew seems correctly devastated when he returns home. His wife isn't credible for a second. Fourth problem: why wouldn't Sam take Aaron to a hospital? Why would he go back o his own place, If Andrew wanted to come back and finish the job, he'd know exactly where to find them. When someone knocks on his door – he opens it without even asking who is there. Would this be the kind of thing a person would do after his lover was stabbed? Hardly. The lack of logic to the behavior of the people in this film is a gaping hole in the script.

So with all that against it, why did I in fact actually like the film to some extent? Well, first because the direct monologues and typed out messages work quite nicely. There is a certain sweetness to the two boys,even if they don't come across as really hot for each other. I thought some of the visuals, the angles, the jiggling camera-work all added a cinéma verité aspect that also was effective. In fact, as it came across almost as a home movie in certain parts, it made the entire thing more believable despite the negatives mentioned previously. It seemed to say: "Hey, these are REAL people, therefore they don't come across as typical Hollywood hunks, they don't have incredible dialogue, their relationship is low-key comfortable as opposed to romantic" – so in a sense many of my original criticisms can be ignored if we take this as almost a documentary instead of a highly polished professional film product. So in the end its choice of style allows for the lack of professionalism.

Lastly, the music was a nice change from the usual. It added to the sweetness of the general atmosphere – almost as if it were 60's hippy rather than modern. And the credits at the end were kind of fun too…

Finally, I guess what won me over the most was the fact that the film didn't shy away from the sex. It was raw and showed full frontal nudity and – gasp -real erections! Real masturbation. And yet, none of it came across as pornographic. But it made the film seem honest.

A young man is in art school in Chicago. He has turned to prostitution after his parents disown him when he comes out so that he can continue to afford his apartment and also pay for his education. His boyfriend of three years comes to visit, notices that one of the tricks is an anti-gay celebrity author, and the two concoct a blackmail scheme to get enough money to get married and allow the student to stop turning tricks.

I was excited to see this film after enjoying the brothers' first film, Wrecked. While it was enjoyable, topical, and had a good storyline, the film lacked the dramatic tension that would have made it memorable. We hear about the family disownment but miss the opportunity to it; we get a summary of the turn to prostitution but don't see the process that led him there; we see the boyfriend told about the prostitution the evening after he proposes and he hardly bats an eye other than asking if there's any other job he can get; there's a hint that the lead character may be jealous of his boyfriend's supportive family, but that doesn't come out in the drama either; we hear about the blackmail target's potential for violence but don't feel or see it, and this doesn't really give a strong personal motive for the lead character to engage in the blackmail; the ending of the story seems a bit too "and they lived happily ever after" with the wife bringing the bag of money, the hypocrite changing his public positions, and a happy marriage.

I thought the explicit sex had an un-erotic quality, which was perfect in the prostitution scenes, but I wanted to see the passion in the relationship with the boyfriend in their scenes, whether it was sexual passion or not.

I don't see any projects coming down the line for the brothers when I do an Internet search. I hope to see more than them, and hope they will take more advantage of opportunities to build dramatic tension in their films. The sort of lack of dramatic tension in their first film worked with the plot, but that can't translate to other situations effectively.