The superficial argument hanging over any discussion of Justin Kelly’s “King Cobra” will sadly, wastefully, frustratingly fall within the orbit of classification: is the film, a true crime yarn that unfolds against a porn industry backdrop, itself an example of pornography? A pruder audience member may respond in the affirmative, citing its graphic (but not explicit) sex scenes, but this is a pretty phony baloney idea. Neither Kelly nor “King Cobra” actually care about the sex; they’re both more interested in the abstract, with the people involved in the sex, and the interpersonal dramas that spark between them and eventually lead to murder most foul. (Not a spoiler: A cursory glance at a plot synopsis will away the ending, but remember that life gave it away first.)
Let’s refocus for a second. If the name Bryan Kocis doesn’t ring a bell for you, well, that’s not a problem, really. Even though the late gay porn producer plays a central role in the movie, he’s never identified by name as “Bryan,” as Kelly, apparently, has elected to call him “Stephen.” It’s his way of respecting the dead, perhaps, but whether Kelly refers to the character as “Bryan,” or “Stephen,” or “Susan,” the basic elements of the very real Kocis’ life and demise remain intact. Back in 2007, Kocis was murdered by Harlow Cuadra and Joe Kerekes, a pair of Virginia Beach escorts with their own industry aspirations, though “murdered” doesn’t quite give the whole gruesome ordeal its due justice. (It takes some serious doing to slash a man’s throat with enough force to nearly take his whole damn head off.)
There’s a deliciously seedy ring to all of that summary; you can see why Kelly, or anyone, might be keen on turning the circumstances of Kocis’ death into cinema, though you may wish that anyone other than Kelly had made it. “King Cobra” isn’t an especially bad film, mind you. It is, in fits and spurts, surprisingly fun, which is maybe the most inappropriate word a person can use to describe a movie about the commercialized sexual exploitation of young men; the cast is game, notably Christian Slater, playing Bryan/Stephen as both a major creepazoid and a sad, lonely man grown old in an era where homosexuality is gaining more acceptance than it enjoyed during his salad days. The question in all of that, of course, is whether we should feel empathy for him. Perhaps it’s enough that Slater tries.
But he tries so hard that he exposes the greatest failing of “King Cobra.” The film lacks proper context, and by consequence muddles its own sense of morality. Should we pity Bryan/Stephen, a man who plead guilty to sexually abusing a minor in 2002? Do we side with him, a man pushed to the fringes by dint of his sexual preferences, or do we side with Harlow (Keegan Allen) and Joe (James Franco), Stephen’s killers, and with Sean Lockhart, alias Brent Corrigan (Garrett Clayton), Stephen’s latest star-in-the-making cash cow? In Stephen’s murder sequence, Keegan hisses a condemnation in the form of a question: “Is that what you like to do, huh? Touch all these boys whenever you want?” It’s a callback to earlier scenes in which Keegan wrestles with memories of his own abuse, and so we accept, on some level, that this justifies his vicious attack on Stephen.
So long as we fill in the blanks ourselves, of course. “King Cobra” never sticks to one subject long enough to make an impression; Kelly gets closest to Corrigan, his ostensible lead, acquainting us with his mother (played by Alicia Silverstone) and in so doing presenting the foundation of his pre-porn life. But even Corrigan remains something of a stranger to us, a film student with directing ambitions of his own who is seduced by the world Stephen introduces him to. Maybe part of it is the film’s brevity, but blaming cycles of narrative dissonance on the slim running time of “King Cobra” would be cheap. The problem isn’t that it’s only ninety minutes long. The problem is that the scripting is too thin to suit Kelly’s characters. Stephen, the victim du jour, is given the most to do and drawn with better discipline, which puts the viewer in the odd position of seeing him as a protagonist.
Suffice to say that “King Cobra” is a tense experience, and often for uncomfortable reasons. But it’s also a familiar experience, or perhaps more accurately the experiences it captures are similar to those captured in films like “Boogie Nights” and “Party Monster.” (Imagine either of those films as directed by Brian De Palma, and you’ll get a sharper sense of what “King Cobra” tries to be.) Unlike in his last film, the execrable “I Am Michael,” Kelly maintains a buoyancy in “King Cobra” that keeps it bobbing along even at its most transparent. There’s humor here, mostly found in Franco’s scenes, because Franco is Franco, and hearing him scream “No little bitches!” as he pumps iron with Allen is worth a handful of chuckles; there’s also rich meaning in the significance of aliases and stage names, though Kelly fails to mine it. Ultimately, the film is a trifle, but the real crime here is that it didn’t have to be. [C-]