Reviewing Movies

Tom—we are never given his last name for he does not have one—was first molested as a nine-year-old by his adoptive father and is taken into care again when his mother discovers what is happening and uses a pitch fork on her husband. Molested again at 13 by a case worker he has been shipped from foster home to care centre all his life. When we meet him at 30 he is a stunningly handsome, six-foot two inch, extremely well-built Rent Boy closeted in a high-class West-End London Flat. It becomes apparent that upon reaching adulthood and being kicked out onto the streets he has returned to what he knows and become the sex toy of a London mobster who likes it rough, Tom’s body exhibiting the resultant scars.

When asked by a neighbour lady who befriends him what it’s like to accept sex for hire he is stumped to come up with a reply. When she later samples the goods and is disappointed by his lack of response he lays it on the line for her. Being treated like a hunk of fresh meat one learns to turn one’s body off and lose touch with what is happening to it; to become emotionally divorced. When one loses that detachment and actually thinks about it one learns to get good at finding that off switch. After 20 years he doesn’t know how to find that switch and turn it back on.

Daniel Newman, who plays Tom, has what in the Body Building trade is called a squatter’s butt—not a bad attribute for one who would play a male prostitute. He wears flashy clothes well and lives a life of indolent bored luxury. Of indeterminate sexual orientation Tom accepts rough sex as his job; not because he likes it or is too weakly submissive to fight back. The storyline of this movie is about what happens one night when he does resist.

The back story provided above is supplied us in flashbacks which occur mainly when Tom is exercising his “OFF SWITCH.” They occur in no apparent chronological order and the synopsis above rather than being a plot spoiler is the background I wish I’d had going into the movie. The production values and acting here are excellent; again, my only real quibble is with the difficulty this movie presents in attempting to follow the storyline. This is a movie that will improve upon second watching.