Eleven Men Out [DVD] [2005] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

This is a slick film coming from an interesting place, Iceland, filled with sorta cute people (of both genders) and some interesting family dynamics, and the main plot circles around a sports star. This film had lots of potential.

In a nutshell, the central figure, an Icelandic soccer ("football") star, Ottar, decides to come out as gay in order to be on the "front page" of a magazine. This leads to problems, as the Icelandic people are evidently quite homophobic, and Ottar is sent packing, his family is enraged/horrified, his son ostracized, and his wife/girlfriend/son's mother is driven further into her liquor-induced semi-coma.

Fortunately, there is another soccer team which is more accepting, and Ottar decides to give it a try on a new team, essentially forming a team of gay and gay-friendly men who become quite successful, mostly because nobody else will play them.

This film fails, mostly, because of a flaw in the story. You never get the chance to know or like Ottar beyond the plain facts that he is an attractive, spoiled, self-centered egotistic dummy who does whatever he wants without really thinking his actions or their consequences through. As such, it's hard to generate much emotional investment in his welfare or the conflicts in the story. The supporting characters are equally shallow, and you are left with little to watch.

Beyond this flaw, the story wanders all over the place, the resolution is still-born, the dialog is filled with witty banter like "shut up," and the sum of the parts is unspectacular.

Ironically, there is a trailer for "Guys & Balls," on this DVD, which is a German film with a very similar plot, done with much more style and grace (and humor) which is far more worth your time. I'd skip "Out" and enjoy "Guys and Balls" instead.

This is not a "feisty comedy" a "hilarious comedy" or a comedy at all. It's probably not a film of any sort. It's just filmstock.

So let's not delude ourselves -- as a movie that typifies a sub-genre of gay cinema, a combination of 'coming-out' and 'sport,' "Eleven Men Out" offers nothing distinctive or titillating or rewarding for its target audience, presumably gay males.

If this movie were simply a rehash of the cliches that have come to dominate much of imported gay European cinema, the movie might have been tolerable. Some sweaty guys, some jokes about balls, some family acceptance scenes, some investigative sex, a club scene, a break-up, etc. But "Eleven Men Out" fails to capture even one or two of these marketable tropes. What the film does have are strangely mean-spirited and dull episodes, perhaps edited together, chronicling a vaguely handsome soccer-player's interactions with strangely mean-spirited and dull family members, lovers, fellow players. This film is joyless and ugly, often chauvinistic, sexist, biggoted and, well, all confusingly so. All the female characters are saps, whores, or drug-addled. The men are cruel or pathetic, or 'lost.'

The DVD cover is stirringly crisp and seductive, with a man cupping his teammate's bum. The actual film quality is grainy, drizzly, washed out, and the sound is hollow. I cannot see how this is 'stylized' rather than merely amateurish. The cast act like they hate themselves and the material. They do not know where to stand in the frame. When viewers are given 'eye candy' -- gratuitous shots of players showering -- the effect is numbingly banal and, worse, self-conscious.

The sports-aspect of its story, a dreary and confusing take on the politics of club soccer, is handled with side-long discussions in locker-rooms between coaches and half-clothed athletes. None of it is sharp, alluring, or political. The games are non-existent. There are no matches save for barely montaged bits of footwork. Or small crowds of people in stands baring their cheer for reaction shots to off-screen goals. The more intimate portrait of a family rocked by their son's sexuality is filmed with the most languid camera, punctuated by tinny emotion. The father-son struggles are crude and perfunctory.

In one scene, the son walks in on his father having anal intercourse with another man, and the son is disgusted. "Eleven Men Out" deserves this disgust -- all relationships in it are reduced to voyeaurism, bad timing, and disappointment. No one has any fun in sex or in love, or really anywhere. There is no pay-off to relationships. When the father and son come back together with a mutual understanding and respect for each other (actually, it's difficult to remember/know if they do), I couldn't help but feel cheated. I thought for sure someone would just off themselves; that is the internal logic of this abysmal film.

This film is Icelandic. I can't be sure it was meant to be a 'gay' movie at all in its home country, before here! studios picked it up for redistribution.

You will regret buying this film from any vendor, no matter the price.

This is an identical plot to the German movie Guys and Balls but their like stops there. As one is fun, energetic, spontaneous, and likable, the other is not. They are both made by the same production company.

Eleven Men Out is a very depressing, serious, and awkward movie where the acting is barely passable. And I did not like that the main character's son gets caught in the middle of his father coming out and his mother being a slut and a drunk.

This is an Icelandic movie. Basically the plot is based on a famous local football player playing for the first and most popular team in Iceland. He announces in the beginning of the movie that he is gay just to get a story and a picture in the local magazine. Then he joins a third rate all gay team.

The rest of the movie is the tribulations of him adjusting to his new life and team. His father is a psychiatrist and a member of the board of his former team. At first his former team chastises him but toward the end this team tries to get him back. There is a game at the end of the movie between the gay team and this straight team. The gay team fails miserably (unlike Guys and Balls.) Also there is a father and son portrayed in Guys and Balls, healthy relationship, unlike this movie.

I liked the movie for his cultural information, otherwise I disliked the movie for everything else.