Capital Games

This is a gay romance and like all romances there are star-crossed lovers who must overcome barriers, obstacles, and challenges to reach each other. Being a romance, the primary focus is on the lovers, in this case two young men who work for the same advertising company, and thus other characters in the film have as their function the ability to hinder the romance or facilitate it or to be the friend to whom the protagonists open their hearts and thus open their hearts to the viewers of the film.Well this film is pure romance and for those who wish to see handsome men overcoming obstacles, including their own prejudices and self-definitions, to find each other, then this is the film for you.Steve Miller, an ex-policeman turned advertising man, is played well by Eric Presnall. Steve finds himself in competition with a bright, ambitious, dashing young man, Mark Richfield, played well by Gregor Cosgrove. These two men are very handsome in very different ways. Presnall is very all-American with a short blond haircut and a military look. Cosgrove, with his long hair and compact muscular body, is a great physical compliment to Presnall. One thing I cannot understand is why the producers of the film would use a basically unflattering photograph of these two men on the cover. Presnall has a scowl and Cosgrove is squinting into the sun. There were so many other images of these two men together that are more revealing of the beauty of these two guys.The film is about 90 minutes long. In truth, I felt it could have been improved a bit if it had been 2 hours long which would have allowed more conversation and process to occur which I think the film needed. One example is that Steve has self identified as a heterosexual and has had an African American girlfriend. As he realizes he is in love with Mark, wishes to continue a sexual relationship with him, he then must come in terms with his sexual orientation. This process of weighing his past sexual and romantic attachments to women and his current obsessions, both romantic and sexual, with a man all takes place while he is in an automatic car wash. The symbolism seems to be that his old past is being washed away. However a bit more process would have been welcomed. The same observation must be made for the character of Mark Richfield, a man engaged to a woman, who must navigate even more barriers than Steve to find the right person for him in life.I enjoyed the film, I was entertained, I am always happy when two people who seem right for each other find each other.

The erotic tension in this film gets like a steambath at times, as two powerbroker alpha males discover a mutual and natural attraction in the middle of the swanky L.A. advertising office where they both work. So how will these porcupines mate? Very, very carefully... at first. Then oh so passionately.This film really tells it like it is when you a man who loves, wants, needs and defends another man. If you aren't gay you won't get this film at all, it will seem frivolous or tedious, or amateurish. If you are gay it's like when The Wizard of Oz goes color midway thru. And the actors will even seem touched by the clumsy poignant grace of Bresson's people.So this prompts my little routine on the Great Awakenings based on the Poe-ish pendulum swings of l'histoire. We are currently in the Fifth Great Awakening of Gay Male Consciousness. There have been four previous ones. The first came during the ancient Greek and Roman times, and was dealt its fatal blow by the Visigoths who ushered down several centuries of darkness and brutality and various cruel and unusual punishments for the love of god. The second great awakening was in the 17th century, Foucault did much to excavate the casual gender laxness of that period; but it came to an end with the serious men of the Enlightenment, the pursuit of empires far and wide, and the dreary churchiness of Victoriana. The third great awakening was in the 1920s, and we know what happened there. Adolph Hitler; say no more. The fourth great awakening was in the 1960s and it lasted for about fifteen some years before AIDS struck.This is the Fifth Great Awakening of Gay Male Consciousness. Films like this one and Triple Crossed and the ones that Franco is contributing (the brother's not gay, tho) and Carter and Calson and all the other brave, tender artists newly tongues untied and rarin' to go are laying out ex-act-ly what it's like to be a gay man. Cutting thru the b.s. Taking off the uniforms to show the manly beating of gayhearts. And if these films strike some as misogynistic (and they will), it's because we as gay men are stepping out from the shadow of women. We have invested women with our longing, our envy, our shame at letting them down somehow, and our lack of freedom. We have suffered the heartbreak of losing closeted gays to women again and again. Imagining a gay male world is to imagine a world largely without women, godspeed them in their own battles for liberation but their battles are not ours and our battles are not theirs. Sometimes we will even have to fight our battles over and against womanism and feminism, and they as well. The consciousness that identifies a specific group cannot exist in the shadow and shackles of the consciousness of a different specific group. The "united front" of gays and women against patriarchy and heterosexism has been more or less a convenient lie of academic queer-theory orthodoxy. It never withstood the light of day... Or rather, we see enough light at the end of that tunnel now that we can define an interpenetrative consciousness that is proudly male, proudly sexual, and proudly gay.So, gay men, enjoy this Fifth Great Awakening while it lasts, however long that is, because if l'histoire teaches us anything it's that it will be dark, dire, dirty and worse on the other side. Love to my brothers.

The story was good but could have been acted far better.

good

Thank you.

I purchased - and watched - this film with great expectations. I like the author's books (I have bought several of them). While cast well, the film is ridled with just about every cinematic cliche you can imagine, some of it dull, some of it silly, not much of it engaging. I liked the two lead actors but felt sorry for the 2-dimensional dialogue and lazy direction they were given. I don't recommend this.

Correcto