This one's a beautiful, tender, quiet romantic drama with a moody atmosphere, set in a tight knit Welsh fishing community. It's a touching story about a man waking up sexually in the middle of his life, and how he, his family, and everyone around him deal with it, which makes it emotional and sentimental without ever getting over the top. The slow burn plays out against a landscape that's as bleak as it is gorgeous, where quiet, closed off men are stuck inside rigid ideas of what masculinity should be. Some people might be reminded of "God's Own Country," but I think both films are lovely in their own way. Jack is a middle aged guy who co-owns a mussel farm with his rough around the edges brother Dyfan, and the tension between the two of them is simmering under the surface right from the start. Dyfan's three sons all help out with the work, while Jack's sulky teenage son Tom keeps skipping out. Jack's been with his wife since they were both 16, and...
The setup is that a serial killer's out there murdering gay men, so two cop buddies get assigned to infiltrate the scene by posing as a gay couple themselves. Neither of them's thrilled about it, but they don't really get a say in the matter. So they end up going through this intense three day crash course on basically how to act gay. Once that's done, they rent an apartment, play it up as a couple, and head off to a gay bar trying to either get hit on or hit on other guys themselves. Meanwhile, there's a gang leader who's convinced the two of them know where a stash of drugs is hidden, since the previous tenants of their apartment had the drugs before the killer got to them. There's a car chase thrown in at some point too, which leads to one of the cops running into a girl he instantly falls for, except she's under the impression that he's actually gay. A few more scenes follow where the other cop is trying to piece together who the killer actually is and why he's doing this. At one point the killer shows up to take one of them out but ends up getting away. And of course the big climax happens in an abandoned warehouse, where the two cops, along with the femme fatale, take on the entire gang plus the killer who finally shows his face.
Here's the thing, if you go into this expecting any kind of thoughtful gay storytelling, you're going to find a thousand problems with it pretty fast. But if you just watch it as a dumb action comedy, there's actually some fun to be had in how silly it all is. The training scenes where this woman teaches the cops how to "be gay" ended up being some of the funniest stuff I've watched in a while, I genuinely laughed out loud, which doesn't happen that often for me. The middle section does drag a bit though, turning into pretty standard kidnapping and action beats that feel like they've been done a hundred times in movies like this. The fight choreography is actually solid, even if a lot of the comedy leans on gay jokes and stereotypes to land. Honestly, I didn't take any of it too seriously and just went in looking for a good time, and it did manage to keep me entertained in a few spots. Overall it's a mixed bag, some good laughs, some solid action, but outside of that, it's pretty forgettable. (4/10)
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