In the Flesh
Phillip Kirsch (hulking Ed Corbin) is having a bad day: he's a closeted undercover cop in Atlanta who has fallen for Oliver (Dane Ritter), a clean-cut male prostitute who is the prime suspect in a murder and narcotics case. What's a guy to do? Writer-director Ben Taylor's amusingly awful, deadly earnest drama would have us believe that, of course, Kirsch supplies an alibi for the troubled hunk and they both learn to love while dodging his superiors and the real killer. The laughable police practices here seem gleaned from bad TV--cops pass manila folders around and mutter things like "Good work, kid"--and the hustler bar where Oliver spends his evenings is even more of a hoot. Phillip is first smitten after watching Oliver sway awkwardly near the club's jukebox, a solitary tear running down his face. "Being in love," we are told, "is not much fun." There's not much flesh here, dammit, but there's a bit of accidental fun. On DVD, you can watch all this in letterbox format, with deluded commentary from Taylor himself.--Steve Wiecking