My Review of In The Flesh (1998)

 

Written And Directed by Ben Taylor

Philip: "Maybe you're just not my type."

Oliver: "Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Keep tellin' yourself that."

Time for another murder mystery. Last week I watched and reviewed the better known Bound and now for the gay male audience, there's this far lesser known film. 

In terms of protagonists, you've got a chain smoking semi closeted detective named Philip Kirsch (Ed Corbin). He opened the movie by busting drugs at a brothel before being assigned another undercover gig. This one being at a gay bar named The Blue Boy. This precise location would put Philip into contact with the second lead of the film.

The second lead being a hustler/student named Oliver Beck (Dane Ritter). If anything, I feel this movie delved a lot more into Oliver as a character than Philip and their dynamic certainly went through the motions of mistrust, co-dependency, lust and potentially even love as the movie progressed.

With Oliver, when he wasn't dealing with a mentally ill sister and a co-worker who was into him more than he was with her, he also had an overzealous client named Mac (Frank Roberts) to deal with. Then Oliver had to deal with Mac being stabbed and him being in the frame for his murder.

Even when Philip recklessly gave Oliver a false statement, both men sort of became social pariahs while trying to find the actual killer. It's by the end of the movie where Philip's co-worker Detective Meyer (Philip Solomon) turned out to be the killer, amid another drug subplot.

It's a hastily done resolution that's not even properly handled within the time frame itself. The "romance" between Philip and Oliver is a mixed bag. There's some chemistry between the actors but at no point does the movie have them even kiss. As characters, they're very much worlds apart with a clear age gap and seemed better suited as friends by the time the movie ended.

- Oliver gave up alcohol after getting into a car crash with a friend that resulted in the latter's death. Philip was married to a woman at one point.

- Another subplot involved Oliver being nice to a disabled man named Mickey (Michael A. Newcomer).

- Standout music: Popcycle's Breathe, which is used frequently throughout the movie.

- Chronology: Late 1990s in Atlanta, Georgia. It was filmed there too.

I'll admit that I found In The Flesh to be a bit of a mixed bag. It's not a bad movie and it's attempts to flesh out both Philip and Oliver are decent enough. Parts of it are very sluggish though and the killer reveal was very sloppily done. Saying that, it's a decent watch.

Rating: 7 out of 10