Book of Revelation (2006)

It may to some men seem like a dream come true, as dancer Daniel is plucked out of his normal everyday life and taken to a secret location where for twelve days he is used by a sex toy for three women, but Book Of Revelation delivers a grim enough image that anyone that has a fantasy such as this might just forget about it.

Weird looking American star Tom Long heads up the cast in Book Of Revelation as the dancer Daniel. Daniel is happy in a relationship with his fellow dancer girlfriend, one day he heads off into the town looking for her cigarettes when he suddenly disappears. His girlfriend is distraught, as is his dance coach, bigger issues are also a foot because this was the night their latest show Osaka was due to begin. Twelve days later Daniel is dumped in the middle of nowhere and returned to his normal life, he struggles to put the pieces of his life back together. As he takes one day at a time we learn to deal with rape from the perspective of a man.

Book Of Revelation tackles a tricky subject and full marks to the producers of this movie for that, but having addressed the issues head on the movie spirals out of control into dimensions that we neither want to know about nor care about.

Having delivered some of the most offensive sexual scenes some will have seen in a movie for a good while. One of which shows Daniel  forced to masturbate for the women’s pleasure; a scene so visually offensive it could well put anyone off masturbation for life. There are scenes of buggery, oral sex, and other sexual no no’s for a mainstream, well semi mainstream movie. It is said that lots of the “sex audience” went to see this movie, because to them it was a legalized version of pornography, but some internet blogs say that even these hardcore porn viewers were slightly disturbed by the movie, how is that for an accolade?

The movie has some great casting, Greta Scacchi takes on the role of Isobel, a character who’s exact relationship with Daniel is never clearly explained, although her primary role is as his hard talking but soft natured dance instructor. Scacchi who comes and goes from the movie industry, here plays a character suffering from cancer, and as the movie progresses we see a fairly rapid decline in her character, this is incredibly realistic and well played for the actress. Joining her and Tom Long is Colin Friels a legend of an Australian actor who for reasons unknown never quite manages to pull off Hollywood’s big time. Here Friels plays the police officer and lover of Isobel, who takes up the case of missing Daniel during his departure. While I commend the casting of both Scacchi and Friels, to understand the casting of Tom Long takes some serious head scratching, I’m not the best looking of men but Long is described throughout all the movie as beautiful, where as to me he looks like a bad find at the council waste disposal depot. During the movie he goes from reasonable looking to horrendously disturbing, the longer he is onscreen the uglier he gets, his performance in honesty is nothing to write home about either.

The Book Of Revelations is set in Australia, and it gives us a great insight to Australian life for the slightly better financed. What the movie has however is that vacantness, a sort of airy feel that a lot of Australian movies have, a sort of pretentiousness that it should not really be trying to afford itself. It’s a soulless piece that allows little or no bonding with any of the characters, there is a certain coldness that rings throughout the entire movie, you could even say aloof. Add to this mix a lot of pretty out there dancing, from Long, who apparently is delivering more of a piece of performance art than an actual dance.

The movie further loses out by spending too much time in the wrong areas, you realise three quarters of the way in that as Daniel tries to piece his life together after his time abused, that he is not going to get any clear resolution to his mystery; yet the movie continues to plod on for thirty minutes longer than it really needs to, going into areas that neither matter or you care about in the movie. One thing is pretty much sure from the movies journey is that the outcome will be pretty bleak.

Despite its flaws and there are one hell of a lot of them, there is something rather good about Book Of Revelations, however rather like the title and the movie itself; it will be a revelation if I ever figure out what exactly it is.