Dog Tags

Plot synopsis:
This is the coming of age story of Nate Merritt (played by Paul Preiss), who stuck in bad relationships with his fiancee and mother decides to enlist in the military, although he is not sure. In the midst of all this turmoil in his life, he meets Andy Forte (played by Bart Fletcher), a carefree gay guy, and the two immediately strike a chord and become soul mates trying to help each other through their dilemmas and troubled youths.
Both men have domineering mothers and live in broken families. Nate's mother Deb (Candy Clark) is a single mother who hides the real identity of the father Gene (Hoyt Richards) from her son, although the alcoholic Gene still continues to live a destitute life in the vicinity in a one-room shack surviving on permanent disability cheques and doing odd jobs on the side. Andy's divorced mother Louise (Diane Davisson) is a former actress that had to leave everything behind to take care of Andy and Andy's son Travis blaming her son for her own predicament of a stay-home caretaker considering Andy an almost absent irresponsible father.
Nate has to deal with Trish Huddle (Amy Lindsay) a philandering fiancee, who is anxious to conceive a son from any military guy, almost guiding Nate step by step in the mechanics of a sexual ritual to achieve this. She has no qualms to have intercourse in Nate's own residence during his absence with other married military men to achieve having the desired boy as Nate discovers when he calls in home unexpectedly. Meanwhile Nate wants desperately to find his real father, despite grave objections from his mother. He is led to think his father is a married military man called Mark Dessau (Keythe Farley), who had a long-term relationship with Deb, Nate's mother. Meanwhile Andy is fighting his own demons and is constantly haunted by the memories of his first lover, a Marine (played by Justin Mortelliti). Andy is unable to get over the loss of his first love and fails in all his other intimate relationships, despite the fact his relation with the Marine, though intense, never had any chance of survival with the Marine just abandoning him to his misery. When a new guy tries to become intimate with him during a disastrous get-together scene, Andy confesses his incurable love to the Marine and refuses to go further, which prompts the guy to tell him frankly: "once a marine, always a marine". Andy is confused by his aspirations to build a future away from home, his sexual orientation and his responsibilities as a father.
After meeting Nate, during a very bizarre circumstance at the residence of an amateur porn director "Uncle Sam" (played by Barry J. Ratcliffe), who invites them to his house to shoot a pornographic scene for money, Nate and Andy leave the house horrified. When Nate offers Andy help with starting his decrepit car, the two strike an immediate friendship with Andy clearly seeing in Nate a reflection of the Marine he once loved. After learning about Nate's obsession to find his true father, the two journey together on a quest to find him. They also find each other and discover how to confront their true "callings." The two engage to explore their own past, present and future amidst brief flashbacks they see throughout the movie.
The bond strengthens between Nate and Andy including sexual affinity between the two, awakening Nate to his own sexuality. Nate decides to confront Mark Dessau (Keythe Farley), his supposed "father", but discovers this was just an illusion. It turns out Mark went out with Nate's mother only after Nate had been conceived. This puts Nate into further despair as he realizes that his mother always deceived him. In his moment of vulnerability, his resistance is down and he easy gives in to having sex with Andy. The scene uses a montage effect where Nate is replaced by Andy's first Marine-love who went away, as Andy responds to both the real man and the man in his memory. The next morning Nate is confused but not weirded out. "There is no should or supposed to," Andy says, "What does Nate want to do?"
Confronted by Nate for a last time and upon an ultimatum to his mother that he will quit his prospective military career, Deb finally reveals that Gene is the real father. In Gene's shack, Nate's search is culminated with he finding a childhood photograph of himself in an album kept by Gene, with Nate being the result of a sexual relation between Gene and Deb at a drive-in movie. The film ends at the drive-in itself with Nate searching his soul with what he has to do with his own life. It is clear he chooses the military path, despite desire and futile efforts of Andy who tries to convince Nate that the two live together as partners and to take care of Andy's kid Travis. The departure shots in which Andy reluctantly leaves Nate alone to decide for his destiny, is a repetition, and a deja-vu of his earlier experience with his first-Marine love, exactly as the party friend had told Andy at the beginning of the film, "once a marine, always a marine."

Tags: plot twist

Review:
Because of the DVD cover picture and some reviews I had read, there was an expectation that this little indie would be just another Gay Consciousness Raising Film, that is, another predictable tale where boy meets boy and both fight and then realize they have good sex together and will love each other for eternity no matter what happens.
I'm glad to say I was wrong; this film offers a more complex view of human behavior, dealing with individuals who learn about one another by listening, by caring, by questioning, and ultimately, by growing in positive ways from their being tossed together purely by chance.
I would recommend sticking with this film past the first ten or fifteen minutes, and you may get wrapped up in director Damion Dietz's exploration of friendship, family, and a search for some kind of meaning in a haphazard world.
Brad Fletcher is fantastic as Andy the carefree gay guy.
Paul Preiss is amazing as Nate the marine recruit who is trying to find himself and his long absent father.
After Nate and Andy meet in a less than ideal setting and a bad experience happens for Nate, the two form a bond.
I think it is wonderful that we are getting some better gay genre movies of late.
I am glad to add DOG TAGS to my recommendation list.
Written and directed by Damion Dietz, Dog Tags opens with "Nate" (Paul Preiss) getting ready to head off to the army.
At the same time, we meet "Andy" (Bart Fletcher), serious and sad, who isn't sure what he wants to do, and doesn't fit in with his peers.
Then we go to flashback, and see how Nate and Andy meet up, and THAT is an interesting story.
We "flash forward" here and there, and sometimes it takes a minute to figure out what's going on, but overall a good script and good story.
Watch it again, catch the audio clues about the guy's first love, and then watch that sequence and you'll see it.Overall, it was not a bad movie.
It was the acting, and some of the cuts to the story (probably during the editing process) that left the end result jagged and mis-connected - which probably led to the previous person's confusion about the supposed 'body double'..
It starts out so slowly but before you know what is happening it keeps building and building until you are totally caught up in the unfolding drama which is quite remarkable in the way it is done.
Yet there is the "missing" father in the background who in one scene utterly wraps you up in the situation that no one would want to be in yet the male lead finds himself in.
The male lead, Paul Preiss, apparently has quit acting and according to his web site he is now directing commercials and short films.
I can certainly understand why he would give up acting, after all, it's a no win situation unless you hit it big, yet it's too bad because he really is a natural.
Dog Tags is the story of two kids who meet like ships in the night at a porn producer's desert home.
One's an aimless party twink whose fathered a child in a moment of inebriated weakness, the other is a very hunky marine who comes from a real white trash background and is unsure of his sexuality.
The roles are respectively played by Bart Fletcher and Paul Preiss.Would these two very competent and attractive leads were worthy of the film.
Dog Tags is a film sending out a real mixed message.
Preiss has himself a real winner of a mother in Candy Clark who's picked out a bride for him, another version of herself from the bar she tends.
When he comes home unexpectedly and finds her cheating, Preiss finds out it's been with half the customers there.As for Fletcher he's also got mother troubles in Amy Lindsay, a woman who insists on being a diva when her diva days have long passed.
Preiss also due to Fletcher's influence is thinking real strongly of going AOL.
Not a real good idea, that's a decision that will affect the rest of your life gay or straight.Preiss is on a quest for his dad and for the life of me I never understood why Clark just didn't come right out and tell him who is father was.
I will say the male sex scenes were handled tastefully.Some interesting points in Dog Tags, but definitely below average..
This films has some very good and very competent actors.
The cross shots seem to be nothing than an exercise you'd do in college while trying to discover your vision and voice as a director.And lastly, if you're going to have a stand-in for the intimate man-on-man sex scene, at least find somebody who actually looks like your star!
It was glaringly visible that he was a mis-matched stand-in.I would have rated this film a "1" except that the acting kept me from doing so.
There are some real stand outs in this film..
But not such an interesting movie.The story slowly unfolds before you and you discover two guys that come from completely different backgrounds and yet both find in each other something the other needs emotionally and psychologically.Maybe actors with a better creative range in character development would have helped this film.
I don't want to give this movie a completely bad review because it does offer up a different story and doesn't completely fail in telling it.
The movie is just slow and frankly the Marine comes across as a bit scary!
This is a well-meaning, earnest, low-budget film about a man and a boy, both fatherless, both seeking the love from and approval of a father/older brother image.
They are thrown together, share stories, dreams, and influence each others' lives.It's not really a gay romance, so let's get that out of the way first.
The director keeps the physical intimacy of the relationship a puzzle for the audience.Nate (Paul Preiss) is a fatherless young man, living with his mother and girlfriend in an impoverished rural area.
On a visit back from boot camp he encounters Andy (Bart Fletcher), a young man who wears eye makeup and seems as aimless as Nate.
They both need ready money: Nate to put a down payment on an engagement ring; Andy to finance a trip across country to escape his life.
To further complicate things, Andy has fathered a child in a moment of party drunkenness.Andy is the real catalyst in Nate's life, urging him to do what HE wants to do, not what he has been told he should do.
He helps him find who he believes is his father, instilling the confidence to do so, and later in an ambiguous shower scene, he encourages Nate to decide if he wants to join him without regard to what he's been taught, but in response to what he really wants.There are three surprises in the last half hour, one after another, but none of them seem forced or out of character with the script and the relationships.
The bonding seems very real and appropriate and the script beautifully shows the emptiness in both men's lives because of the loss of a father figure.Preiss and Fletcher are both fine young actors and give exemplary, totally believable performances.
I had wished the physical intimacy had been better established and not just hinted at - and I don't mean I wanted or needed to see sex, because neither was seeking that- they were seeking love in physical expression.
Had the director given us some BROKEBACK scenes, it would be all we would have needed to have truly understood how both felt about each other.All in all, it's a nice film.
This film doesn't require the suspension of disbelief -- it's more like putting your complete trust and faith that some of the meaningless meanderings and pointless plot contrivances will actually solidify into something coherent -- however that trust and faith would be misplaced.Unfortunately, the marketing of this film -- even in film festivals and by the gay press -- prior to it's release as another in a long line of TLA piece of craps -- was as a gay romance or even a bromance between a gay man and a straight man on a mission of self-discovery.
That may have been a good story -- but instead we get all these side tracks, the bad tropes of someone who directed and wrote a piece of crap like BEVERLY KILLS and still hasn't learn anything better -- such as the fiancé who wants to get pregnant to get ahead in life AND wants to send her fiancé to the marines (where if he died in war, she'd get squat) and so she still jumps on anything and everything -- and pointless and annoying conversations with the mothers of both characters -- or a long segue-way at a 'exclusive' gay party of the proper kind of 'rich' 'sophisticated' gay men every gay boy should dream of being -- which of course means a lot of martini's and not wearing underwear and having sex with the two guys willing to do gratuitous full frontal nudity (aka the porn models brought on set).
As others have pointed out in their reviews, there are two many elements that make no sense or worse, add nothing to the movie -- other than to contradict what the director may have wanted to do with the characters -- such as having Andy lock his son in his car, not feed him, want to abandon him with either his mother or whomever took him while he was at said exclusive party.
The scene having the Nate character walk all that long way to and from his supposed Dad's office was also unexplained -- and worse -- pointless.
And worse, as others pointed out, was the obvious use of a stand in portions of the so-called intimate scenes with Nate and Andy.
In any event, there is no sense in how Nate goes from a fiancé who he is willing to impregnate to even simply kissing and showering -- and even more importantly -- trusting and just befriending a guy who is essentially a total stranger who was merely a transport from point A to point B.
These plot holes are either pointless or plot contrivances (having Nate be walking in the middle of the desert just to be found by the local porn producer) and make what little there may have been to point this movie down a successful path and just shove it down a fruitless one..
If you are prepared to suspend disbelief on this low budget film then you may have enjoyed Dog Tags as I did.
While the primary thrust of the film is self awareness, the buddy stuff jogged along nicely in its wake and those makeup disputes, the baby that never cried and unconvincing ending never managed to take a firm hold on me partly because I was so determined not to let them.
I think that if you make a conscious effort to just enjoy the ride, you can and seeing this film without knowing anything about it was like that for me.
I then found it easy to let Mr Paul Preiss dangle his doggie tags at me without asking too many questions.
The Military Chaser may have been getting ready after seeing the film's poster of Nate's pecs and tags, but I wonder if something a little more up front would have been more in order or if another poster entirely would have been more appropriate.
The gay audience was obviously targeted, although it was more a film about friendship than anything else.
If Nate had joined those other Marines flashing themselves all over the internet strapped for cash and waving their doggies around, it would have been another film entirely and the film tried to make this point and succeeded to some extent.
I suspect if it had gone up that path it would have had more appeal, but instead it chose a more interesting and difficult route, that of moral support between a gay and a straight male, both "Tags" or labels if one thinks about it.
The films main strength was in the camera-work which gave it a sense of real poetry.
A surprisingly good and well made low budget film.
............his true sexuality is?"When buying this film, I had hoped for something perhaps as well done and along the lines of the recently released "Shelter," a film highly received by many of we everyday, nonprofessional reviewers.
However, that hope was quickly turned topsy-turvy (learn the primary reason for this by continuing on to both the last paragraph and the Postscript, below).To this viewer, this is NOT a "Gay Romance" and certainly not a "Gay Drama." (Oh, I know, I know, those of you who've seen the film will say: "what about the bed and shower scenes?" Then I'd come back with: "maybe he was just getting to that 'you-show-me-yours-I'll-show-you-mine' life phase a little later than most").
But to continue on, what this film is, is a story in drama form of two young men trying to find themselves and their roles in life.
One is heterosexual (Nate), one is gay (Andy); one is more a goalless, live-day-to-day type looking for a way to change all that; one is, simply, a free spirit......with a haunting memory.
Our lead character, Nate, is someone at the most vulnerable point in his existence, someone desperately in need of comforting----and it just happens that the person who then comes into his life is gay.
And, now that you know bare details for each character, you should also be made aware that, because of strong needs brought about by problems in both men's lives, they do fall into sex.........but they do NOT fall into love.
Still, Paul Preiss (Nate) and Bart Fletcher (Andy) are, together, able to achieve quite a high degree of "chemistry" (not of the Trevor Wright / Brad Rowe caliber), which is very important to making their characters believable to us.But, wait, there is yet another character of note making up this interesting little group of ours: Nate's mother, Deb (nicely played by Candy Clark).
She seemingly loves her son, but whether she's always honest with him, as would be hoped, remains for us to find out.I do have to especially address Paul Preiss's performance because, as a newbie to film, he most definitely gives this viewer a sense of his being "a natural" to acting (similar, I would say, to the case of Wright).
Further, unlike Fletcher who is very good in his role, it is Preiss who takes control of / commands our attention.One especially jarring note, for this reviewer, involves the writer / director's apparent need to insert what I consider gratuitous gay sex into the film's first twenty minutes.
A heterosexual sex scene, on the other hand, seemed appropriate to developing aspects of Preiss's character.
Again, I certainly did not see any real need for the male frontal and anal sex scenes associated with Fletcher's character building (I've already got enough of that type DVD).
What was the director trying to do, anyway, shout out: this IS a gay movie?!!
Obviously, Dietz chose not to aim this production for the mainstream market---too bad for Preiss's and Fletcher's futures; they deserved more.
(Extra Point / Star given for Preiss and Fletcher performances..........none extra given for the director's)PS--Finally, to address this review's subject question (above), we know that character, Nate (representing the Director), at the most emotionally low and vulnerable point in his life, has a "gay event" with likely the most understanding and encouraging person he's ever met.
But, from that point on and through film's end, is there anything that tells us, definitively (or even near definitively), what the sexuality future of Nate / Damion is going to be?
Please don't give me conjectures in trying to answer this.((NOTE to Director Dietz: Check your Dog Tags, Damion........maybe in addition to Name, SSAN, Blood Type, they'll tell you your sexuality.))****.
Secondly, for a low budget, indie, gay-themed movie, the production values and style were well intact and well done.
Also, I was sorely deceived (major spoiler alert ahead) by the premise of two males, one straight military dude and one gay guy on a road trip to discovery.
And before I'm accused of giving anything away, the main menu (shame on you, production team, or TLA) shows clips of the movie, including the two stars having sexual intercourse.
(Thankfully, I didn't pay too close attention to the main menu before watching the film, so it was still a question of whether or not the marine would bed the gay male.) I was (unsuccessfully) hoping for an original story of someone that's not only straight, but stays that way, and a gay man we can definitely root for.
Not only is the gay character not worth rooting for, he's easily despicable.
Well, he's Father of the Year compared to this low-life.
Okay, yeah, I'm taking this fictional story too seriously, but nothing really offends me as child abuse and bad parenting.
Bad film..equal to Socket.
The acting of two main actors are badly directed, hard-to-believe, pueril.
Maybe acting is good and idea grate (dialogs not so grate), but direction is simply bad.
Director tried to make film mysterious, did Nate died or he just do not want to see Andy, did they have sex only once or did they saw each other again.
Let me quote someone here - ''At one point, the two end up in a motel room, and a tentative sex scene commences.
throughout the scene, Andy's thick eyeliner comes and goes, and Nate's shaved head grows hair and then loses it.
What's going on?'' Maybe it's just an error, maybe Paul Preiss (Nate) didn't want to kiss Bart Fletcher so they hire understand or maybe it's directors attempt to be mysterious and intelligent.