Lucky Bastard

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.

I selected this movie due to the nudity and smoking listed in the warning. I like edgy movies, but these movies tend to not be very good and it is good to find a gem in the rough, which this one is. The main characters were well cast, even the antagonist. I've never worked in porn, but I would think this is how the characters act offscreen. The character of Mike (McManus) is what I would expect a porn director to be, friendly then mean then back to friendly, whatever it takes to get the project done. Then Ashley (Rue) is what I would think a porn actress would be, having the ability to block out what she just did, "It's just a job to pay the rent." knowing that she will deal with it later in life. Dave G./Ernest (Paulson) is an awesome creeper. Mike ignores all the red flags to get the job done. Ashely eventually acquiesces to get the job done. Paulson hides his psychosis to get the job done. The rest of the car does a good job of supporting the main characters. All this was tied together by the director keeping the energy high and the suspense ongoing. At least there were no scantily clad women backing into a dark room backwards. All this suspense was done in broad daylight in one day. I truly enjoy how the movie ended. No spoilers. Something I found interesting was that Ashely Saint was a producer. That is a unique name and the name of one of the main characters. It made me think that this may have been made from an actual event, but no. Nothing that I could find. It may have just been someone deciding to give the real Ashely some notoriety. Maybe. All-in-all, an enjoyable offbeat edgy movie.

This flick screened at Outfest in Los Angeles two nights ago to a completely sold out audience. Many standing in line were even turned away. They were the lucky ones.

The storyline, in a nutshell: When his boyfriend leaves town, architect and restorer Rusty quickly hooks up with a sexy drifter named Denny. Rusty's already unsettled life is set on its ear when he discovers that Denny is a crystal meth-addicted hustler.

Beginning about 20-30 minutes into the film, audience members started walking out in droves. I'm not sure of their reasons, but I would have left had I not been stuck in the middle of a crowded row of people involved with the film. I would have just felt bad disturbing their experience.

Why would I have left? I found both the storyline and the characters unbelievable and unlikeable. Rusty is described as a success, but I couldn't figure out why anyone would use that word to describe him. Unable to make a decision or take a stand, he lets himself get pushed around professionally and emotionally throughout the film. Had there been some kind of hook or insight in either the writing of the character or the actor's performance, I might have wanted to root for the guy, but he just kept going back for more and never earned my respect as an audience member.

The two lead actors are gorgeous, so that was what largely what made the film semi-bearable for me. And Dale Dymkowski, who plays the hustler Denny, did the best he could with what he was given, so he's pretty much what earned the two stars in my rating.

Technically the film is kind of creaky as well. The color was terrible in the print I saw, and the sound was extremely tinny.

Recommended for home viewing only, where you have the fast forward option and the ability to give up on it easily if you're so inclined.

Viewers and critics have a hate-on for this film that baffles me. "Lucky Bastard" is a solid, well-told story about a man who, professionally and personally, is simply stuck. Given the opportunity to escape the pressures to move forward to which his business partner and his boyfriend each subject him, Rusty leaps at it when it appears in the form of Denny, a deeply damaged hustler and meth addict. The appeal of trying to fix Denny parallels Rusty's enjoyment of restoring old houses, Denny's emotional damage being comparable to the damage that perfectionist Rusty deals with in his work.

The principal actors handle the material well, although Timothy Cole as Rusty's business partner is the weakest member of the cast. The film is far more introspective than writer/director Everett Lewis's previous work. Lewis drew upon his own experience being in a relationship with a meth addict and much of the dialog, notably Denny's monologue on how he became involved with drugs and sex work, came from life. The result is a film that feels intimate and real. My one complaint is that it feels like there is a scene missing between Denny's final angry outburst and Rusty's sending him packing. Rusty's emotional transition feels abrupt and unmotivated. That one flaw should not dissuade anyone from seeing the film.

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.