CKP

Set in Chechnya in 1992, and "based on real events", this war drama is one of director Mario Salieri's ambitious video features combining XXX content with serious, historical storytelling. I imagine that 21st Century porn audiences would reject it out of hand (too much dialog/story, only brief sex scenes) but the auteur does a very fine job in his own niche.

Franceso Malcom and Selen are cast as the heroes, brother and sister subjected to incarceration and torture by an assorted group of violent villains led by Valentino and Don Fernando, both American actors working in Italy. There are numerous dramatic and exposition scenes as well as seven concise sex scenes, all of it achieved within a 78-minute running time. One big action sequence has the siblings escaping on a highway in a motorcyle plus sidecar, pursued by a jeep filled with armed thugs, and Salieri executes it with aplomb.

Vivid stagings do not shy away from violence, with poor Malcom taking the brunt of the abuse. At one point Don Fernando subjects him to CBT with electricity applied to his balls, while Valentino sodomizes him (soft-core angles only in this mainstream feature) as part of his torturing him for information. A huge cast, with even small part actors getting a screen credit for a change, makes this play like a real movie. Supporting sex roles are well-limned by Maria Bellucci with very short- cropped hair evocative as another victim while superstar Olivia Del Rio is solid as a bad guy.

Huge-breasted Joy Karin's is terrific as a wheel-chair-confined mama to the siblings, forced into a sexual threesome by Valentino that delves into sexual content not usually covered in porn. Ending set in a church is rather gimmicky, more a reminder that Salieri is working in exploitation cinema rather than serious filmmaking after all.