Steel

Obvious , the purpoise is to be a different film. The embroidery of succes, self isolation, anxiety, panic crisis ,depression, shadows of past, new life are well placed but the work with them seems more complicated than necesary. The story is very simple and it is fair to be so. The contrast between Chad Connell and David Cameron is just brilliant and, in essence, the axis of the film, against the not well coherence. But the fear to not convince to audience of director transforms all in a Baroque construction, in not the most inspired manner. So, a nice film , more than decent.

I believe this film is worthy of so much appreciation by many men struggling with their identity and truth. How informative, challenging, encouraging!

You really can tell a Canadian indie movie; there's always that overriding vernier of slow-pace coupled with extremely bad bed music. This writing and plot is very weak, and the entire story could have been told in 30 minutes; enough time to expose and resolve the lead character's entire background story, add in a few tawdry gratuitous sex scenes...and yeah, that's pretty much it. The long pan-outs of scenery and mugging for the camera are beyond superfluous. And without spoilers, I pretty much "got" who Alexander was after their third interaction (yes...it was that predictable). The one good thing I can say is the filmography is well done and ranges from the hand-held/shaky technique to give the air of tension to some very elaborate shots which must have required some expensive equipment. In fact, I seriously don't know how the producer got the money to create this movie with such polish (then again, this is a Canadian film, so I'm sure they got a public grant for their required quota of gay films per year). If you have an hour to kill, watch this movie with a remote control so you can fast-forward through the slow parts...you'll need it.

At over 90 minutes duration, it's too long. Lead actor actually does a very good job. But the music score and sound effects just kill it. The virtually non-stop piano trio music is unoriginally composed, trite, poorly performed, and played way too loud. Sound effects (think shrieking strings from Pyscho) to accompany Daniel's panic attacks are also over the top. Movie would have been so much better if they'd paid more attention to the sound track, gotten better musical performers and turned the volume down. Strangely, though it took 3 sittings, I did get through the whole thing and came away still liking it.

I have never watched a movie in my life with this much music throughout it. It was one long continuous score! It was overly dramatic as well. It would be appropriate at an orchestra event, but not for this film. The whole story could have been told in 30 minutes. There was so much dead air and unnecessary montages.

On a positive note, the set decorator and production designer did a good job.