Cercle vicieux

I don't think I would be as harsh as the previous reviewer, although, he raises many good points. But, I found the movie to be "ok". It always helps when one of the main characters is really hot to help you get through some of the bad parts of the movie. ;) I thought the acting was decent, but most of the characters typical. Newman as Tom was pretty good. The actor who portrayed Max was also pretty good. But, many stereotypical parts...the old "the character is gay because he was abused as a child" bit really is old.

I must admit though, I really am sick of gay movies about f***ed up gay people. Does every gay character have to be a prostitute, abused as a child, drug addict, sex addict or some combination there of? How about a movie about a gay character where the guy is actually normal and relatively happy? That's why I loved "Trick" so much. Just a couple of normal, relatively happy guys living relatively normal lives.

Endgame is not awful. How's that for a ringing endorsement? ;)

It is no wonder that Gary Wicks who wrote, cast and directed this effort has found his career limited to low key gay productions ever since. This film suggests a peculiar personal bent which has little relevance to the wider public whether gay or straight.

A rather cute rent boy is retained by a wealthy gangster to be exclusively available to him in a posh West End apartment. He uses the lad to service business clients or entrap business rivals or debtors. Sessions are filmed for subsequent blackmail use.

The gangster himself is turned on by violence and rape and we see the youth seriously abused on several occasions. Plainly there is little humanity in his treatment. Eventually a series of deaths occur as the plot evolves into a search to retrieve blackmail tapes hidden by our attractive young hero.

The camera work is both artistic and indulgent for admirers of boy beauty. Daniel Newman, a prolific 90's UK child star with elfin good looks and a well tuned physique, is filmed in every glamorous method. Soft lighting, superb make up, imaginative angles, explicit full frontal and frequent erotic posterior shots provide the viewer with a definitive 'soft porn' experience that has probably made the young actor into masturbatory fantasy image for millions of gay men ever since. But did Daniel Newman ever realize the motivation of Gary Wicks to produce this effect? The young man probably had to spend hours on set stark naked for the 'artistic' pleasure of his employers. And what we see in the finished film is probably just a censored fraction of the full unexpurgated footage taken during shooting. Gary Wicks went on to produce an intimate portrait of real life boy porn star Johann Paulik and, unless Dan Newman was entirely unmoved during the filmed sex scenes, I expect there is an archive of XXX material depicting him somewhere.

In short I got the distasteful impression that an innocent former child star was hoodwinked into appearing in a soft porn production that ultimately wrecked his career. He has done very little since, despite the fair reviews of his acting performance, and runs a fitness center in Wimbledon today for his living. Type cast as an effete boy prostitute with nothing of his body left for the public to imagine, there was very little future in the industry for him and he was just put on the sidelines.

This film portrays homosexuality as a sick violent disease, boy prostitutes as 'trash' figures without any sense of self esteem and women as the only qualified givers of worthy love - even though they betray their husbands to sleep with boy prostitute neighbors that happen to need their help. I give the actors top marks for this production - especially Dan Newman who probably suffered a lot for it - but the film itself is nothing more than soft porn masquerading as respectable drama.

ENDGAME

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Sound format: Dolby Digital

After killing the thuggish gangster (Mark McGann) who'd been acting as his pimp, a beautiful London rent boy (Daniel Newman) goes on the run with a sympathetic American couple (Toni Barry and Corey Johnson), but they're pursued by a corrupt police officer (John Benfield), one of Newman's former clients, desperate to retrieve an incriminating videotape in the boy's possession.

Gary Wicks' low budget feature debut will divide opinion like few other gay-themed movies of recent years. The pacing is a little muted, and some of the lapses in logic are too significant to ignore (Barry and Johnson's reaction to Newman's crime is simply not credible), but Wicks generates a fair degree of emotional tension, helped by attractive location photography (by David Bennett), a memorable music score (by Adrian Thomas), and a fine portrait of corrupted innocence by Newman (SPEAK LIKE A CHILD), an elfin beauty whose low-key performance anchors the entire production.

True to expectation, Wicks (whose resumé includes an executive producer credit on MOMENTS WITH JOHAN, a softcore ode to European porn star Johan Paulik, produced in 1996) makes a virtue of Newman's exquisite splendor, presenting him either shirtless or naked in every other scene, while Bennett's camera savors (almost) every inch of the young actor's glorious, sculpted body. But in a plot twist calculated to provoke outraged disbelief from some quarters, Newman's relationship with McGann and his cronies is depicted as violent and coercive, while his first heterosexual encounter (with Barry) is portrayed as a tender, liberating experience! This narrative backflip is both inappropriate and offensive, and suggests nothing more than a sop to commercial fortunes, skewing the film toward a gay audience whilst simultaneously appeasing potential straight viewers, an approach which defies all narrative logic and satisfies no one. That aside, however, the plot is reasonably engaging and the performances are superb, while the fetishization of Newman's fabulous torso provides some compensation for the movie's thematic shortcomings.

NB. The VHS version contains full-frontal nudity from Newman during a shower sequence early in the film, but the US DVD has been deliberately reframed to obscure everything below the waist.

When I started to watch this film, I liked the scenario where it started. A cute boy from West London and his relationship with a Gangster that abused him constantly sounded interesting specially in a city so versatile and cosmopolitan as London!! Everything was good so far and the relationship with the neighbor downstairs sounded this drama was going to bring more than expected and that exactly happened when this guy went to stay at this couple's cabin in the country. Everything seemed to go down because I really did not buy this guy falling into this woman so in few words, the second half of this film could be much better than what was delivered!

This moody British film, not to be confused with Samuel Becket's work of the same name, was chosen to "disturb" the festival audience, or so said the talking heads of the programming panel. Rent boy Tom (Daniel Newman) gets caught in the evil machinations of his pimp, gangster George Norris (Mark McGann) and a crooked cop Dunston (John Benfield), who enjoys using Tom from time to time, himself. A fateful twist causes Norris's accidental death during his attempted rape of Tom. Desperate to escape Norris's body and Dunston's pursuit, Tom seeks the solace and protection of a very unlikely pair, his downstairs American neighbors Max and Nicki.

Max is a hothead consumed with a passion for money, while Nicki is more down to earth, but a bit unfocused and uncommitted herself. Why in the world would Tom come to them? Desperation, indeed. Walking totally of their initial characters (or perhaps showing us how complex they are?), Max and Nicki, after little hesitation, agree to hide Tom out at their rustic cottage in Wales. A very confused Tom is attracted to Nicki's warmth, and they eventually "seduce" each other. We can understand Nicki's dissatisfaction with Max's self-absorbed hard shell of a personality, and her momentary attraction to Tom's complete vulnerability. And despite how implausible it may seem at first, their sex scene makes sense once we realize that Tom is seeking tenderness, not hot sex per se.

All in all, this film hits home with its theme of sex as a tool of power which even the power-obsessed themselves can't control. But it falls short trying to wrap things up with a fast and violent ending which leads Tom to a happy future, and leads Nicki to sacrifice much more than her husband, Max, does.