Focus

Now here's a porn title we know a lot of you will be wondering about. There was plenty of hype behind the release of Focus/Refocus. It's a title so jam-packed with content it would make it impossible to critique the whole thing in just one review. Luckily we’re just looking at Focus in this case, rather than the second half of the title.

Raging Stallion Studios has never been one to shy away from risk-taking adult cinema – it usually pays off for them. Here they've decided to take on the old style Hollywood film noir genre and infuse it with some modern and unique aesthetic elements in areas like cinematography. Labelled "the single most ambitious project ever filmed by a gay porn studio" – albeit by the studio itself in its press notes – there's no denying that RSS really had something big on their hands with this. Self-promotion aside, it's certainly up there as one of the more intriguing and ambitious projects since Michael Lucas' self-indulgent, yet ultimately unmissable, La Dolce Vita.

The story follows Joe Wilder (Cole Streets) on a whirlwind sexual adventure through a strange, criminal underworld. There are some great sets, an incredible cast of RSS exclusives (including last year's RSS Man of the Year David Taylor) and no less than three directors that oversaw the production. In quite an interesting move, they also employed professional (non-porn) actor Joe Wicht to play a police interrogator to really give the feature a bit more class.

What RSS are really hanging their hopes on however, is the use of P.O.V. (point of view) footage used throughout it. Streets' character is an amateur videographer, a function that allows for the incorporation of the amateur-style shooting of sex scenes. The actors take control of what you see in some parts, in an attempt to make the sex seem more intimate than a simple sex scene from a studio-produced film. This footage is cross cut with HD cameras filming in a normal style of cinematography, fusing the two formats of reality and fantasy at the same time.

The technical elements aside, there are some great pairings in Focus. Seeing hairy hottie Streets with the deliciously smooth, muscled and tattooed Taylor is a real highlight of two contrasting stars joined together, whereas Conner Habib and Tristan Jaxx are a lot more similar in their one-on-one.

The orgy at the end of the movie will be the first many go to – and you won't be disappointed seeing Steve Cruz get skewered at both ends by a whole assortment of hotties – but for this reviewer it is Scott Tanner's scene with Taylor that really gets the blood pumping. Tanner really gets Taylor's cock from every angle, swallowing it whole in one of the best bottoming performances you'll ever see. This guy was just made to take tool.

As a means to bringing the elements of amateur porn into the world of big-budget studio produced titles, it's a bit like McDonald's selling salad – stay with me. You don’t go to McDonald's for a salad, you go to pig out on the fattiest, best-tasting bad food there is. The same could be said of studio-produced porn. If we wanted to see amateur porn, we'd look for it separately, not head over to Raging Stallion looking to get our rocks off on seeing their big budget stars in a faux-amateur setting.

But that doesn’t mean that Focus (and to a larger extent Focus/Refocus) isn't a groundbreaking piece of work from a studio that’s known to get creative. There are so many gems that come out of RSS and this one deserves its praise (as do a lot of their less popular but extremely ground-breaking films such as Port Of Entry). Focus represents another positive step forward for Stallion and will be another great addition to their portfolio of work. The action is great, the stars – as always – are top notch, with special mention to the rising star Cole Streets and the ever enjoyable bottom Scott Tanner. Chris Ward, Tony DiMarco and Ben Leon seemed to have had a similar vision because the film isn't in any way disjointed by having three popular porn creatives at the helm. We thoroughly recommend checking out Focus-Refocus P.O.V. too if you like the off-beat cinematography used in part of Focus.