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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sex equals death equals art..., 5 Jan 2007
It's always refrshing to see a queer-themed film where the men are not just on the other side of puberty, or anguishing about coming out, or torn up over HIV/AIDS. In Open Cam - a low budget film shot in Washington and made on about five dollars - the men for once are all buff, mature and sexy and at first glance seem to be comfortable within themselves.
And although the film suffers from the usual problems of wooden acting and no money for production values, Open Cam does manage to offer up some fairely explicit man-on-man sex scenes that are somewhat titillating. Believe it or not the movie also has a pretty compelling story which centers around a serial killer cruising a racy chat room to find his latest hunky victim.
Manny (Andreau Thomas) is a buff Washington-based artist and part-time rent boy, who picks up most of his tricks online through the "open cam." Unfortunately though, his conquests seem to be being picked off one by one. Enter butch, macho and bearded Hamilton (Amir Darvish), a Washington cop who has discovered his true sexual orientation after splitting up from his wife, who ironically dumped him for another man.
No surprises here, as Hamilton tries to zero in on the killer, becoming a sort of protector for Manny, he finds himself lusting over the artist come hunk. Like any serial killer film, there are lots of twists and turns as Manny and Hamilton - and us - try to figure out who is behind the murders, (I actually figured it out about 15 minutes before the film ended).
Unfortunately Open Cam seems to be a collection of missed opportunities. While the idea is good and the sex scenes are suitably graphic, there are no full frontal scenes, and like my follow reviewer says, if this were a European film, the actors would not be shying away from this kind of thing. Consequently, many of these scenes come across as a bit precious and it defeats the purpose of what the makers of the film are trying to achieve in the first place.
There are also other problems that plague this film. The acting is wildly uneven, with Amir Davish obviously giving the best performance; you can tell that he's an actor but most of the other parts look as though local boys are playing them and that the director has found them by trolling the neighborhood bars and clubs. It also doesn't help that Andreau Thomas, while looking great is absolutely terrible in the title role - he can't even yawn or show sadness naturally.
Open Cam also needed editing, and a clearer narrative, there's far too much time wasted talking on cell phones and wandering aimlessly through dark apartments. It feels unbearably long without any point or poignancy. The scares aren't there, and neither are the characters. The plot ambles in so many directions it's too hard to keep anyone straight; sometimes it's too hard to see what is actually going on in the "open cam" chat room.
I guess the best thing about Open Cam is the man-on-man action and the one big sex scene between Manny and Hamilton, but this together with a lot of the other scenes come across as erotic without really being titillating enough. It probably would have been better for the first-time Robert Gaston to go the whole hog and just made a porn film of it all.
There was a film out a few years ago called Hard - it was low budget thriller, dark and subversive it had a similar story, it was also incredibly graphic, but had a much better approach to the subject of serial killers, promiscuity and explicit sex than this film. Mike Leonard January 07.
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