|
|
|
plot summary: An Irish lad with a penchant for packing explosives in his pants gets busted and sent to Borstal (England's equivalent of Juvie) to straighten out. Apparently the Borstal didn't get the memo that locking a bunch of pubescent boys together in close living quarters makes them anything but straight. Boy meets sailor. Boy and sailor do an all male version of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest". Sailor goes to war. Sailor dies in war. Boy finds a chick. Boy and chick do it until boy is released back to Ireland. It's your typical coming of age story --- and boring as hell.
review: I'm gay so I'm obligated by law to see films with gay themes. This is the reason I saw Fluffer. This is the reason I saw In & Out. This is the reason I watched Melrose Place. (Ok, we all know the latter isn't true because Melrose Place is a really good show.) This is the reason that Monday afternoon, when I had nothing better to do, I bussed it up to the hill to see Borstal Boy. Janice was contemplating going with me, but decided not to. Good decision, Janice.
So after the boring-as-hell title sequence of waves and boat trip between Ireland and England, we get a close up of a young man (Shawn Hatosy) taping a stick of dynamite to his inner thigh. "Is that a bomb in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?" At this point, I thought the movie had potential. So then we get him going through customs or whatever and I couldn't help but think about all the terrorist stuff that I've been thinking about lately. I've been reading Underground by Haruki Murakami which is about the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in '95, and so that, along with 9/11 have been on my mind a lot lately. I like that there wasn't much dialogue here and that probably everyone in the audience was thinking about similar things. Cut to him jerry-rigging a time bomb and getting arrested. The sequence of events in this film are all very compact. The film never really breathes or gives any sense of the amount of time that passes between each event. This will be something I reference again, so look out.
So then he's in big boy prison and along with a sailor boy. We finally learn the lead's name --- Brendan. The sailor is named Charlie. Brendan gets beat down in prison for giving props to the Irish Republic Army. Charlie consoles him and <gasp> kisses him. Brendan gets freaked out (cuz he's sporting wood). Both get sent off to the Borstal.
Here's where the film gets really compact. There are no cutaways to the sun setting or snow falling or anything. Yet somehow, in the course of two hours, the boys stage an escape and a play, paint a room, and get into loads of mischief. There is never any sexual tension between Charlie (who is apparently openly gay) and Brendan. When they finally kiss, its not really hot or anything. Its all exploratory and adolescent. And there's no cheap shots of boys' weiners (just one butt crack--and neither of the leads'). Yet, sexual awakening is the only theme in the film.
The film's other purpose is making Brendan out to be some sort of rebel saint. He stops befriends all the outcasts at Borstal. He wins the boy. He wins the girl. He makes innumerable references to himself as Oscar Wilde. He learns his lessons. He fades off into the smokey train platform. Roll credits. I'm supposed to buy this guy as someone who had as much charisma as Oscar Wilde? Maybe they just cut all of Shawn Hatosy's lines because his Irish accent sucked so bad or something. At least he's nice to look at. Danny Dyer as Charlie was, however, somewhat believable (and very cute). I almost felt some emotion when they were doing the poor-dead-boy montage. Then I realized it was my cell phone vibrating. Janice had responded to one of my many e-mails during the film. Did I mention that throughout the course of the film I was e-mailing people to tell them how bad the movie was? This movie sucks. (jeremy.04.02)
rating
related links
