'Blackmail Boy'

Comments (0) By Melissa Anderson Tuesday, Nov 8 2005

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Blackmail Boy
Written and directed by Michalis Reppas and Thanassis Papathanasiou
Picture This!, opens November 18, Quad

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The House of Atreus meets Honcho in this overcooked tale of greed, violence, deception, and Greek love. In a small town outside Athens, petulant 20-year-old hunk Christos (Yannis Tsimitselis) beds his slatternly next-door neighbor, his niece's pretty ballet teacher, and Yiorgos (Akyllas Karazisis), a respected middle-aged family man and land developer prone to spoiling the young stud with yellow Triumph motorcycles. Christos repays the kindness by going in on a scheme with his brother-in-law (who's sleeping with Christos's mama) to blackmail Yiorgos for his same-sexing so that the real estate tycoon will relinquish a plot of land to Christos and his venal clan. The hysteria is relentless: shrieking, punching, puking, trigger pulling. Overheard bits of inane party chatter provide the only moments of levity; otherwise the theater of cruelty slogs on with no cathartic release. Curiously, Blackmail Boy's alternate title is Oxygen—and by film's end, you'll be gasping for it.