Movie Review: Capitol Games

Over the holidays I bought several movies I'd never seen before--which if you know me, it's really not that unusual anymore because I just don't watch much TV the last several years. I used to be a huge movie goer but found I prefer reading to watching, but there are times when I want to just be... you know?

One of the movies I bought was Capital Games. When I first started dipping my toe in the gay romance pool I naturally went to my local library. Surprisingly they had a great selection. My first authors were T.A. Chase, Jordan Castillo Price, Abigail Roux & Madeleine Urban, J.L. Langley, Alley Blue, and G.A. Hauser. Have I said yet how awesome my library is?

These discoveries through the library helped immensely because then I could go to Amazon and know who to ask for in the search field. I seriously love the "people who bought this also bought" suggestions, allowing me to gorge myself on back list, try new authors, and branch out.

Capital Games was one of my first M/M reads and admittedly the only book in which I remotely liked Mark Richfield. But I'll get to that in a minute. On Amazon this had high reviews and I was curious how the movie compared with the book. I think it stayed pretty close to the book, and watching it I remembered some of my reactions when I first read the story.

I liked Steve Miller in the book. An ex-cop who I imagined as blond, muscular, and broad through the shoulders. Initially I liked Mark as well with his refinement. I had forgotten he had an accent. How did the actors fit my metal image? Meh.

Word of advice. Don't use the cover of the movie because I thought the guy playing Mark (the one on the left) was actor, John Glover. And my first thought was, "Nooooo, he's too old." No worries it wasn't him.

The actor is Gregor Crosgrove. Who in the movie was more attractive than I thought he would be, with great eyes. In the book the reason Mark's family accused him of being gay was because he appeared effeminate which was never mentioned in the movie, appropriately so. Gregor was pretty but he was almost more buff than Eric Presnall, who played Steve Miller.

There were distinct moments when Gregor, with the British accent, when he reminded me of the actor in The Princess Bride. I kept squinting wondering if... and then I'd say no... because really Gregor was much too young unless he was the child of or cousin... The resemblance and the tone was uncanny.

Moving on, so I was watching the movie, remembering the different thoughts the characters were having and wondering if the dialogue in the book was that simple and un-engaging. I didn't remember THAT much from a book I read four + years ago so I shrugged it off, sort of vegging as I watched until it came to the their first kiss. Steve and Mark are lost in the desert at night, fighting and pushing, and then they kiss.

Seriously, the on screen kiss was pretty good... until... (I'm already laughing) the mutual hand job. You see their feet with their jeans and undies around their ankles, feet kicking a little bit, and then a shot of their faces. They are laying on their backs, shoulder to shoulder, rubbing each other off, although you can't see it. I had exact same thought when I read the book.

Sand in the ass crack hurts.

I think it every time when I see pictures of model covered in sand. I don't find it sexy. I can only cringe. That was exactly what happened as I watched. But that first kiss was really great.

The next morning, the lost duo get rescued. Mark turns cold and Steve leaves the company trip to go home. One thing I never realized was how stalkerish Steve was. We get to meet Adam, I liked movie Adam, but still it was sort of creepy to see Steve act that way when Mark avoided him. I had forgotten Steve really wasn't shy about having sexual and emotional feelings for Mark. He was aggressive. This new occurrence in this life he wanted to explore with Mark and Mark couldn't get away fast enough and then other times he gave in. Always the frustrating back and forth. But then again, Steve was always pursuing Mark in the office where they could get caught. The HR side of me had a field day marking up violations my company would have pinned them with if they had been caught.

Mark's fiancé, my only comment was my husband said he couldn't stand her and cringed at her voice. It seemed high pitched and when she raised her voice to yell...

Steve strong-arms Mark to work with him. While at Steve's house, Mark goes through Steve's closet. When I read that I thought, how rude. Do guys go through each other's stuff without permission? I had the same thought watching and then it came to Steve's old uniform... when Mark confronted Steve with it, I made my own porno music sounds.

Hot scene alert...

I had forgotten Mark's fettish with police uniforms. Seriously, it was a smokin' scene that made me gulp, several times.

And then we skipped to the next morning, the guys were naked in bed, and as Steve walked in the bathroom he looked at Mark rolling around on the bed. We get a hiney shot and then a full frontal. In my opinion, neither was necessary and the music was like ta-da and Cut!

Mark waxed and waned, which was almost as bad as reading the back forth. Steve became sulky but ended up crashing a wedding. I think what bugged me the most about the book was Mark would willingly get married and have a horrible life, all to prove others wrong. He made terrible decisions because he couldn't stand up for himself. He didn't adjust his course when he figured out his decisions were wrong. And he was willing to take other people down with him.

Overall the movie was okay. I'm not a fan of the sound track which was either awkward or jolting. The last couple of minutes was completely unnecessary. Just the guys riding around in the car after Steve crashes the wedding. It could have stopped when they walked  hand in hand out of the church doors. They could have given us another one of those amazing kisses, or a couple of lines with declarations of love and devotion, but instead they went cruising which added no content to the movie.

Those are my thoughts on the book/movie of Capital Games. I know a lot of time and hard work went into scripting and shooting the movie. I ended up really enjoying the actors as they replaced the mental images I had already cultivated.

I hope you guys have a great weekend. I have a couple of other movies to watch and hopefully a couple of movie reviews to follow.

Between writing, of course.