Cock & Bull Story

I recently saw this movie at a film festival. I totally agree with the previous reviewer. This movie has absolutely no redeeming qualities. I personally think that the characters, the filming, the writing and the directing is severely sub standard. There are inconsistencies in the whole movie. Even the basic premise that leads to the accusation of the main characters being gay is faulty since boxers usually wear cups to protect their private parts. The boxing scenes themselves are unbelievable and the homophobia is so rampant as to be utterly distasteful.

I wonder why it was released again under another name?

Billy Hayes may be best known for his novel cum 1978 film 'Midnight Express' which detailed his tortured life in a Turkish prison. But here Hayes turns his penchant for grit and the raw surface of the bigotry of gang violence and amateur boxing into a tale about the intense struggles young men from the dark side of the tracks have in accepting their sexuality. It is a tough story, never flinching on reality or detail, but it drives its message home like a stake through the chest.

Travis Coleman (Bret Roberts) is a handsome young amateur boxer, very much in the closet as a gay man, whose best friend Jacko (Brian Austin Green) is a ne're-do-well gay basher who, though dedicated to his friend's future as a boxer, is equally dedicated to street fighting anyone who questions the asexual closeness of their friendship. Travis has a girlfriend Annie (Wendy Fowler) who disapproves of Travis' friendship with Jacko. Travis is torn between caring for his abused mother (Kay Lenz), training with his fight manager Pascoe (Greg Mullavy), maintaining his high maintenance friendship with Jacko, and coming to grips with his moments of self discovery that his true physical needs are in the 'clinch' during a fight when he recognizes (terrified) that he is sexually attracted to men. When he fights Sangster (Christian Payne) a 'Northie' (we have no idea which town this is except that it has a Northside and Southside in conflict) he is sexually aroused, a fact that Sangster confides in his Northie buddies. Homophobic epithets are sprayed on the cities walls and Jacko attacks the perpetrators, killing gay bashers in a mutually destructive series of conflicts. When Travis wins an important fight that will allow him to move to Las Vegas, he is told by everyone to ditch Jacko, but Jacko has just murdered to defend Travis' honor, complicating Travis' life even further. He confesses to Jacko that he is indeed is gay and the two face dire consequences from this revelation.

The script is heavily reliant on gross language and while the words constantly used are story appropriate, the language becomes overbearing. This is a film with a lot of violence, one that while many films about same sex attraction are becoming more popular with the public, manages to remind us that many sexually conflicted people continue to face odious odds in being who they are. Both Brian Austin Green and Bret Roberts give wholly credible performances as so the bulk of the supporting cast. The film is shot with a gritty edge (Scott Seidman has done a terrific Production Design) and Director Hayes never for a minute lets us forget the dire level of existence in which all of the characters live. COCK AND BULL STORY ranks with Hayes' own MIDNIGHT EXPRESS as a story that despite its grungy details needs to make the public aware of a life very dark. It is an unjustly underrated film. Grady Harp

Travis is a pretty, hunky young amateur boxer who needs to win his way out of Southside, a no-hope hole in a post-industrial wasteland, to the promised land of Las Vegas (no less). Jacko is his best friend, older and a serial loser loathed by both Travis's coach and his girlfriend. Throw in doting mother and tyrannical Alpha-male father unable to put meat on the table. To punch his way to Vegas, Travis has to defeat Sangster, another pretty boy with whom he has an unsettling pre-fight encounter in the men's room, unaware it is his opponent. The rest of the movie spirals off in a riot of homophobia vs tacit homosexuality, which leaves corpses in the street and the most implausible and extended locker room conversation imaginable - above all after a fight.

This movie deserved a better plot. It starts so well, unforgettable location shots, good music, strong first scenes, good performances. It is nearly always nice to look at, but the story trails off into near farcical implausibility – you can't expect even best buddies to behave this way, or believe the fight-winning potential of the guilty secret that emerges.

Curiously 'A Cock and Bull Story' is based on a play of the same name by Richard Crowe and Richard Zauduc (yes, exactly) - so you are warned that it will be long on words, short on action. Is it possible the authors. dazzled by pink innuendo, forgot the title's main meaning? Because that is what A Cock and Bull Story richly lives up to.

I believe that this was a well intentioned effort although it leaves a gay viewer with the desire to do harm to at least one of the principals both of whom are doing their best. Brian A. Green does a very good job of shedding his light weight past so to speak and Bret is working double time to achieve some kind of pathos.

The proclivities demonstrated are very, very real and if only Fight Club had gone there. The marriage of hand to hand combat (most of its forms) and homo-eroticism is not an uncommon theme. This was a good, honest effort at realism. It's not a PSA.

My intuition tells me that the intention here is to show how misguided homophobia is and how it not only is the source of great harm to others but also to oneself. In the right hands this could have been a brilliant movie, for example David Storey's.

"Cock & Bull Story" (it's now reverted to its original name) is based fairly closely on a fringe play of the same name.

The lead characters are afflicted with a degree of self-loathing that makes them victims of their own hatred. It's tough to sympathise with them. The only outlet they've managed to find for their emotional & sexual (self-)repression is extreme violence - both in the boxing ring and on the street. There is no happy ending in this film and, without giving too much away (of a denouement that's telegraphed about an hour before it arrives), it sticks with the 1960s tradition that the homosexuals have to either commit suicide, be murder victims, or end in some other unhappy way. I think this is meant to be a movie about repressed homosexuality, yet the only (fairly graphic) sex scene is straight. It's hard to work out who the film-makers want to see this film, or what their message is. It got a very, very muted reception at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival so I guess happy homosexuals aren't the target group.

Good points? Well, the establishing shots of a rundown city centre are well-done. And the two leading cast members seem pretty dedicated. Erm... that's about it.

Overall: not recommended unless you're a raging homophobe.