Lucky Bastard

That's the simple truth. The dialog is terrible, the story is redundant & boring, it feels contrived & forced, utterly unnatural. The acting is subpar, emotionless, stale. At the close, the 4th guy doesn't even look like he did at the beginning... nothing about this film (except for how cute Rusty is) makes this a film worth the time, honestly. I've seen worse, but not by much....

Lessons were learned but no education was seen. Just suddenly they understood what it was supposed to be & it was boring. I'd say skip it altogether except the cuteness of Rusty & the occasional nicely toned ass. Good luck.

Yeah, that's not a sterling summation, but it is apt. I always go for gay themed movies, just to see what they might add to the genre. Lucky Bastard is different enough to earn a couple stars in that it deals with situations not well covered in other gay cinema. It seems that the directing was fairly loose, which I happen to like, and the main cast performed well enough, i.e., they were believable in their actions and dialogue.

Other reviewers seem to dislike the actors, but I think they were well chosen. The weakest lead was surely actor who played Garrett, the business partner, but his role is somewhat peripheral like a touchstone the main character goes to when he needs a small reset. The boyfriend, Daniel, is kind of forgettable, but the role is small. The meth-addicted hustler, Denny, almost nailed the role, but it's probably a problem with costume and make-up - every meth head I have been around has seriously messed up skin, teeth, and hollow eyes. Which leaves the main character, Rusty.

There were a few scenes where I wanted to punch him in the throat because he was making stupid decisions, but isn't that why we watch movies? To invest ourselves in character portrayals? The actor is adorable and I did not have to stretch credulity to follow him on his journey of self discovery and growth.

Is this a cinematic masterpiece? Hardly. But there is a good return on entertainment investment for this relatively short drama.

Somewhat recommend, especially for people who are looking for a gay movie off the beaten path.

I gave this higher marks than some, because I think the story cast a light on the prevalence of meth in LA, especially when it's used for sexual enhancement in the gay community. I once visited LA in 2011, and I met a recovering meth addict, age 50, by chance. It's important to show how these drugs destroy lives, as it did Denny's, one of the leads in this film. Yes...the actor playing Rusty was a bit stiff, but he played and looked the part well enough....wholesome and cute with a lean, hot body. Yes, it didn't seem believable that he would let a meth head drifter into his head or bed. But Denny was a confident charmer with a smoking hot body. And Rusty seemed to be very vanilla and conventional, with limited sexual experience. Denny brought out his inner pig....at least for awhile. In the end, we did see a believable conclusion....as Rusty's experiment didn't last long. Denny had the more demanding role and I think he did a good job. Happy ending.....but felt bad for all the people like Denny. Worth watching once.

After watching about half the film I kept thinking that an educated, intelligent, successful person would never so easily hook up with some guy he had a chance encounter with at a liquor store, let alone almost immediately claim that he "really loved" the guy. And, if that wasn't sufficiently incredible, he certainly wouldn't stick around once the guy started hitting on him for money for drugs, followed by making a scene at a bar proclaiming that "you don't own me" and "I'll do whatever I want."

I even checked in this forum at that point to see what others thought about the plausibility of all this … and initially agreed 100% with a reviewer who wrote several lines beginning with "There is absolutely no way any sensible person would …" and who concluded "The implausibilities in the story are the film's major weakness." That's exactly what I felt too.

But I gave it some further thought and watched the rest of the movie … with a bit of fast-forwarding. There are a lot of people, intelligent or not, educated or not, sophisticated or not, who sometimes do totally irrational things when driven by infatuation or, more bluntly, by lust. It may imply a degree of vulnerability but people who seem to have their act together can still be vulnerable as well.

I doubt at this point in life I'd be so easily drawn into doing something so stupid, but then opportunities to be irrational with someone as sexy as the character Denny don't come my way … for reasons other than my sensible, world-weary personality.

Real people do incredibly stupid things when it comes to sex. If they're lucky, they're not too badly hurt by the experiences and they do return to making sensible choices … as was the case with Rusty.

Quite often people in movies do things that we would never do and act in a way that seems irrational to us, but most of us know real people who do such things. The news often reports on famous, supposedly well-respected, sensible people who do incredibly reckless things because of sex. We may even look back on our own lives and recall some amazingly implausible things we did … because of sex.

Nonetheless, even after accepting Rusty's illogical behavior as realistic for some emotionally fragile people and also noting that the two main characters in the movie are definitely easy on the eyes, it is still by no means a great movie. There was never any sense of Rusty being driven by his infatuation for Denny, we were just told that he really loved him and had to believe that was what was making him act foolishly. Neither the story nor the acting helped to make us understand why Rusty did what he did.

I've seen a lot of gay films, and many of them have been just okay. This one, however, was just plain bad.

There is absolutely no way any sensible person would give a meth addict $200. There is no way any sensible person would claim to have fallen in love with someone he picked up in a convenience store (especially someone in a supposed committed relationship). There is no way any sensible person would then allow that meth addict to say, "I'm yours, but you don't own me. I can fool around with whoever I want."

The implausibilities in the story are the film's major weakness. The bad acting would run a close second. The guy who plays Denny is all smirk and swagger, looking like the love child of Sting and Neil Patrick Harris. He is a complete douchebag with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. What does Rusty know about him that causes him to fall in love? That he's HIV+. And that's about it. Some argued in their review that Denny is somehow damaged and Rusty feels the need to "fix" him in the same way he restores old houses. I don't buy that at all; if that was the intent of the writer/director, it should have been set up a hell of a lot better in the early part of the film.

The actor playing Rusty is wooden and bland. At no time do we see the torture he is supposed to be suffering that leads him into this destructive relationship with Denny (which is really an extended one- night stand).

I could go on and on, but it would be as pointless as this piece of crap film.

The score, by William V. Malpede, alternates between haunting and intense. It's fantastic, and by far the only redeeming aspect of this film.