Reviewing Movies

For the record, he may be a fellow Canadian but I do not find Jeff Speakman with his two-day stubble, flying hair and stocky features attractive—he looks working-class common. James Marsden is strikingly handsome with his trim build and chiseled features. This may simply be a matter of grooming and posture but in this case first impressions count.

Dan and Tom first met at a bar and before the night was over went to Tom’s apartment for a drunken one-night stand. Tom works at his family-owned restaurant and lives with his wife in the apartment bequeathed by his grandfather. He managed two years of community college before returning home to the family business. Dan is a university-educated film producer, a hustler, a metro sexual. Dan is bisexual, a man on the make and to him the encounter was a casual tryst soon forgotten. To Tom the encounter would seem to have been sexual experimentation that took place when alcohol had befuddled his better judgment.

Jump forward five years and the two meet again and end up once more at Tom’s apartment. This time, however the dynamic has changed radically. Tom has been stalking Dan because his wife died in a car accident just after learning she had AIDS and 24 days ago Tom learned he tested positive for HIV. Tom is certain his liaison with Dan is the only chance he had of being exposed and his observations of Dan’s lifestyle tend to indicate that Dan is at risk.

This sets the stage for a battle of wits, physical domination and moral suasion. Before Dan fully realizes the trap he has walked into he finds himself handcuffed to a chair and donating a forcibly removed blood sample Tom takes out to a lab for testing. As they wait for the test results these two equally matched young men spar verbally and physically with one another with words, cunning and fists.

I can only wish I’d had the opportunity to see the play with Noah Wyle starring as Dan on stage in LA. On screen the bi-play between these two is lost as the camera directs our view and we cannot see the physicality and menace that is exchanged between them. Interestingly enough despite being alone in an airless sealed apartment for two days these two young hunks keep their clothes on for the entire movie.