Shiner

I saw it at the 2004 SF gay & lesbian film festival and the audience was distinctly unnerved, which was obviously the goal. You follow two lowlife-types vaguely connected with a gym torment various people in their lives for amusement. It is an extended trip through a world where friendship and attraction end in humiliation and violence. Sound unpleasant? It is; but there is an obsessiveness that keeps it from being merely sordid. It's serious and disturbing. It doesn't glamorize violence--quite the opposite. Though there are several moments of bizarre humor, especially a scene where a man and a woman exchange absurd small talk while getting steamed up in bed.

Shiner, directed by Christian Calson, centers around three "couples" and their relationships with obsession and violence. Pretty good start as far as I'm concerned. Interesting. The couples break down into a heterosexual couple, two heterosexual male friends and a straight guy being "harmlessly" stalked by a gay man.

The "het" couple really don't have much of a role in the film. There are some scenes that show how they like to be aggressive when having sex or playing around with each other, but seem to have no real purpose since the are so marginalized. My assumption is that they represent a more day to day illustration of how sex/violence are integrated in a couples life. The couple aren't very aggressive and it's not even shot in any kind of erotic way. As characters, they don't add much to the theme or plot.

The two male friends make up the bulk of the plot. They engage in some gay bashing of sorts by convincing a homosexual man to have sex with them in an alley. This escalates into violence. And the violence changes them. It becomes a means of sexual gratification. And their need for violence t release grows as the film progresses. The main problem I had is the violence is not convincing. Never once does it seem that any of the characters is in any real danger. It just doesn't work. Given that the whole theme of the film is about the characters' relationships with violence, this is a major problem. Unfortunately, the make-up doesn't help either. Sometimes, it's okay, other times it is very bad. In one scene, I really wondered why one of the characters had rouge smeared on his face. Confusing.

The more interesting pair of the characters is the "stalker couple." Here Calson seemed to have more to say and was able to develop a more coherent storyline. Perhaps it is because the characters seem to develop more and have resolution at the end. Shiner may well have been much better if it had stuck with these two.

I appreciate that Calson wanted to achieve a lot with this film. It is admirable. Most low budget flicks don't aspire to much. I don't think Calson achieved want he was aiming for. Myself, I found nothing particularly controversial or unsettling. Shiner was unconvincing. This doesn't mean, however, that the director can't achieve something with his next film.

He seems to have something to say.

I saw this film last year and would like to comment on the plot and the acting. Although the subject matter was extensively grim, I enjoyed the depiction of raw emotion, both in terms of the graphic physical and sexual imagery as well as in terms of emotion. As a highly successful director I would especially like to note Seth Harrington (Reg's) performance as exceptional. His performance was raw and powerful as well as profound. Unfortunately, I don't believe Harrington received adequate recognition for his performance. I hope he continues to pursue his interest in the performing arts and film, as I think he shows great potential. Good luck Seth Harrington, I am sure you will eventually obtain the praise you rightly deserve.

I liked this movie a lot more than other reviews led me to expect to. I think many of the defects others saw were done intentionally by the director in order to shake the audience out of the complacency we all tend to enter into automatically when we watch a movie.

We have seen so many movies that we cannot help expecting certain conventions of plot, characterization and style; when we do not find those conventions, we think we have seen a bad movie. While Shiner is no great masterpiece, it is far from the garbage many others said it is.

It is disorienting, often disturbing, sometimes disarmingly erotic, and certainly very much unlike any other movie any of us have EVER seen. The acting is consistently strong, surprisingly strong, very much better than the deceptively amateurish production would seem to inspire.

The many unfavorable reviews show that the director has succeeded in one of his goals: to shake up his audience. Some people hate being shaken like that, but I love it.

I quite enjoyed it. I came by the screener doing some volunteer work for a film festival and then saw it again on amazon. I was curious what all the fuss was about.

I have to say it was quite funny and very erotic in some parts. I can see why there are such strong feelings about the film. The picture is stark and the soundtrack is fine. The dialog script comes as a surprise at times. The film dares to mix a rather morbid story with some childish jokes. The surprise is that it all works nicely.

David Zelina and Nicholas T. King deliver a real punch with their roles. Forgive the pun.