Body Blow (Australia)

You could pretty much describe this as a queer neo-noir erotic thriller about a closeted cop who freely admits he’s a sex addict and gradually loses control as the story unfolds. There was a time when sleazy, sweaty, proudly trashy movies like this flourished on dangerous attraction, moral ambiguity, and people making terrible decisions beneath neon lights. This isn’t one of them, though, at least not for me. It falls short in a lot of ways and, honestly, never managed to hold my attention. The main problem is that the plot becomes so convoluted and confusing that massive parts of it simply stop making sense.

Aiden is a Sydney cop trying his hardest not to masturbate because he’s dealing with some kind of sex addiction and has persuaded himself that abstinence makes him physically stronger as well as a better cop. He takes it so seriously that, midway through the movie, he actually buys a chastity cage. He’s assigned to a unit policing the queer district, where his lesbian boss tells him to go undercover as a gay man at a gay club because overdose deaths around the area are rising. There he meets Cody, a young twink who works at this shady bar and is controlled by Fat Frankie, a local drug dealer, pimp, crime boss, and drag queen all in one. While still desperately trying to suppress his urges, Aiden begins falling for Cody as he’s pulled deeper into the murky, morally gray politics of this entire underworld. The pair start attending various drug fueled parties in an attempt to uncover something, but another twist arrives every five or ten minutes and, honestly, I completely lost the thread. Cody and Aiden wind up having an affair, with Cody helping Aiden try to steal video tapes from Fat Frankie that contain evidence capable of bringing down some cops. Then, in the middle of everything, Fat Frankie ends up dead, which puts the police on Cody’s trail. He’s caught but escapes, and Aiden follows after him. Then the lesbian boss and her retired father suddenly add yet another twist, and by then I’d totally lost track of the drugs, the sex, and what this movie was even trying to do.

This is clearly supposed to function as an erotic thriller, loaded with a few sex scenes, shirtless men, and plenty of nudity all the way through. From that early scene in which Aiden arrests Cody and it turns into some sort of sexual role play, it’s obvious the film wants to establish that Aiden is both an idiot and an awful cop, well before he later confesses to sexually assaulting a male suspect who may have been underage. I genuinely don’t think the filmmaker was aiming for anything especially smart. The dialogue wanders into camp more than once. The performances are dialed up far beyond natural. Every twist plays less like a real surprise and more like a wink at the audience. Yet none of it somehow feels accidental; it’s plainly deliberate. This absolutely won’t be for everyone, and it wasn’t for me either. It goes all-in on melodrama, eroticism, and pulp without hesitation. It tries to carry you through a story driven by urgency, offering what is meant to be a gripping cop procedural seen through a queer lens. It wants to be an unapologetically gay, steamy, full throttle cop thriller that also has brains behind it. Sure, the actor playing the cop is attractive, and honestly that’s the only thing that worked for me, although even his performance eventually feels pretty stiff. At times, it comes across like a late night cable thriller somebody found on an old VHS tape and lovingly restored for modern viewers. (3/10)