Call Boy (2018) - Japan
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia)
Director Daisuke Miura goes incredibly graphic and sexually charged in the soft core character drama thriller “Call Boy”. In fact, the title is precisely what the film is about and there is no hiding that graphic sex scenes one after another will be on show and on display. Perhaps not entirely successful is due to the sedated nature of the film, resulting in heavy reliance on its sex scene to drive the story along as each actresses bare all for the screen to progress.
Tori Matsuzaka plays the lead role with a level of mysterious and uninterested nature that makes it difficult for the audience to truly relate to the character. He is ably supported by a string of more matured women, led by Miss Shizuka (played to stunning effect by Sei Matobu), his only classmate and friend (played by Yuki Sakurai) and Shizuka’s mute daughter Sakura (played by Ami Tomite).
The real problem with “Call Boy” is that the focus is on the sex scenes and the whole film pretty collapse in the absence of it. There will be a sex appeal to these kind of film, but for the more demanding viewers, selling skins and graphically depicting them through fine editing will not excuse for the rest of the padding up duration. Perhaps some may say that action films fill a similar void as each martial arts scene is simply used to move the film along. Still, the film contains some good daring performances namely from the actresses as for Tori Matsuzaka, he is far from leading material.
I rated it 5/10