Discreet (2017) User Reviews

"Discreet" will do little to gather additional Mathews fans

[ccorral419 · 4/10 · 1 June 2018]

Director/Writer Travis Mathews ("Interior. Leather Bar" 2013) carries with him into this messy gay themed film, his Masters in Counseling Psychology. Alex (Jonny Mars "A Ghost Story" 2017) is a young man reeling from a childhood demon that controls his life. When he learns from his estranged mom (Joy Cunningham) that his abuser (the erie Bob Swaffar "Meet Me There" 2014) is still alive, he embarks on a journey to confront the guy. Guiding him through his cross country travels is self-help bacon sizzling video guru Mandy (comedian Atsuko Okatsuka). With several stop offs at an adult bookstore, and a fascination with young Zack (Jordan Elsass "Long Road Home" 2017), the ending for all is not promising. Wearing both director and writer hats here, Mathews tries to accomplish to much and falls short across the board. Why the fascination with bacon sizzling, an unclear association with Zack, why the stop off at the same bookstore when he's supposed to be traveling cross country, are just a few of the the films inconsistencies. Cross country cinematography (Drew Xanthopoulos) manages to capture Alex's lonely travels and despair. However, the film score by Mark De Gli Antoni continually sets up tension that never arises. Mathews may have a following in the gay film community, but "Discreet" will do little to gather additional fans.

Surreal and Uneven

[numberone_1 · 5/10 · 6 May 2019]

I intend to view this film again and perhaps add or change to this review, as I am of the opinion that Mathews was trying to power-pack several different stories that were all connected. Such connections were sometimes explicit, other times highly implicit, and even on occasion imaginary or inexplicable, possibly all told in real time, possibly juxtaposing past flashbacks with present actions, hence my partial title of "uneven". The film is also surreal on a number of levels, aided by on-location filming, contrasting scenes of bright sunshine (where actions and events of the characters almost seem unreal) with dark-of-night montages and interiors. Jonny Mars is excellent and conveys complex dimensions of Alex, no easy feat given the character's largely taciturn manner.

'Discreet' should've remained hidden behind a blank Grindr profile..nobody asked for this

[clark-96172 · 1/10 · 10 January 2022]

Alex returns to his home town after many years away to discover that the man who abused him as a child is still alive. What follows is a weird, disheveled, and quite unorganized group of scenes that together is supposed to make a coherent movie but instead makes you wonder how the writer was able to convince anyone to sign on to this project. He wants revenge, but then takes quite a long time to enact this revenge. He becomes obsessed with a teenage boy going so far as to break into his home and inhale his presumably dirty underwear and stalking him inside of his home (btw where are his parents?). So now he, a grown man, victim of kidnapping and sexual assault as a kid, is now victimizing a teenage boy. Btw you never find out what happened when the boy found him in his home, it just goes to the next scene. Is the boy ok? Along the way he's stopping off at an adult video store, luring discreet older men to hotel rooms and robbing them, and arguably the most confusing part of this film is his obsession with listening to right wing media on the radio. I mean he's a thief and a creep, why not throw bigot on top of that too. There are several random scenes of an unknown corpse being wrapped in black plastic, zip tied and tossed in a river to float. It doesn't appear to be difficult to find as the lighting gives off the impression that its not too far into the woods and if the last scene is any indication...its right by a highly trafficked bridge. Then there's Mandy and her ASMR randomly juxtaposed in the film that are painful on the ears. I can't for the life of me understand what this movie is meant to be. What was I supposed to learn from this film? I was an hour and 6 minutes into this hour and 19 minute film and I had no idea what the actual plot of this film was.

A complete waste of my time and I wish I had never watched it. If I can protect others from seeing this film with this review then I've done my due diligence and public service for the new year.