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"The story of one mans pain unraveling. In the streets of the Bronx by night, an Irish immigrant, while finding his sexual identity, experiences the reawakening of old childhood demons."
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There’s a lot going on in '2by4'. Writer,director,star Jimmy Smallhorne blends a sexual identity crisis with a scathing look at the experience of illegal Irish immigrants in New York City to deliver a compelling story through dark streets, dark bedrooms, and dark bars.
Johnny is well-respected in his job with his uncle Trump's construction company, as well as in the Irish community in the north of the Bronx, where, helped along partly by drugs and alcohol, he parties until the small hours. He loves his girlfriend, but somehow, Johnny, facing increasing sleeping disorders, starts to feel uneasy. The new leather trousers seem to be having an effect on night owls on the dark streets, or is Johnny looking for the company of other men? One night he witnesses his uncle with a trick on the building site, which seems only to reawaken old demons. What Johnny doesn't know is, why.
As tension rises at the construction site — Uncle Trump has been squandering his cash rather than paying his crew — Johnnie seeks relief from the stress by taking a walk through some very mean streets, where he encounters an Australian hustler named Christian (Bradley Fitts). Christian is a rent boy who hasn’t even made it to Manhattan yet. He takes Johnny to a nearby crack house for a night of sex but a tender connection develops between the two men. Johnnie wakes up out of a nightmare and Christian softly comforts him back to reality. Johnnie has the opportunity to reciprocate that tenderness when Christian shows up at Johnny’s house one night a total mess. Johnnie puts him in a cold tub and gently nurses him back to reality. Maria walks in just in time to catch them in a kiss.
Attempts to build a relationship with Christian seem doomed to failure for reasons unknown, and his girlfriend Maria puzzles over the impenetrable wall of silence surrounding her lover, sinking deeper and deeper into desperation...
Any hope that '2by4' will be a moving story of a gay man coming to terms with himself goes out the window when Johnnie, in a fit of self-loathing, picks a fight in a local bodega so he can become the victim of a good old-fashioned Bronx smack down, iron pipe included. He follows that up with a trip to a particularly freaky bar (identified in the credits as New York’s legendary and now shuttered Vault) where amidst the backdrop of clientele that look like creatures from the deepest circle of Johnnie's hell he has a climactic breakdown.
For a small film, '2by4' benefits by having a big-time cinematographer, Declan Quinn (who’s worked on everything from Leaving Las Vegas to Monsoon Wedding), to capture the grit of the tough lives of these immigrants. Some of the scenes showing the construction crew riding around in the back of a truck and gawking at the size of Manhattan’s skyscrapers are reminiscent of similar scenes that Quinn shot for In America. In both cases, they succeed at conveying the dislocation and amazement that an immigrant in New York must feel.
Jimmy Smallhorne, director, lead actor and co-author of this masterpiece of North American independent film, redefines the concept of "raw" with '2by4'. Everything else we have seen so far pales into insignificance in comparison. It is not just the incredible authenticity attained by, for example, the way the film makers have put together a mixture of professional actors and those with no acting experience whatsoever, and even to the extent of using the real New York Irish dialect instead of the usual "more-or-less" accent. It is more to do with the way in which Smallhorne takes the courage to show things as they are to an unsuspecting public, which cinema on both sides of the Atlantic has so far never dared. This is not just about addressing social taboos, gay identity or sexual child abuse, but the horrifyingly accurate portrayal of the affects of incest on an unsuspecting young man, the absence followed by the outburst of emotion, and the sweeping aside of literally every doubt as to the honesty of the portrayal of the main character.
Whether it's on the subject of the problems of establishing relationships or communication, nights interrupted by terror or the traumatic break-down caused by drugs which also enter the gateway to the sub-conscience, the acting and directorial virtuosity of Smallhorne are unparallelled. If the Oscars were more than a token of Hollywood satisfaction, Smallhorne would without doubt have received Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Actor.
'2by4' is by far one of the best gay films of the 90's despite the fact that it was not aimed specifically at a gay audience even though it contains an intense, ambivalent gay sex scene - certainly more grandiose than any before that time. For the male-centered abuse film - if such a genre really does exist at all - '2by4' is probably an even more important milestone.
Film Information: '2by4'
Web: Cast, Awards, Bios and Additional Details at IMDb
Director: Jimmy Smallhorne
Writers: Jimmy Smallhorne & Terry McGoff
Credits: Full Cast, Crew & Credits
Genre: Drama
Awards: 1 win & 2 nominations
Runtime: 90 min
Spoken Language: English
Subtitles: n/a
Download & Extract Film Files: '2by4'
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| Method 1.) File Self Extraction. (For PC) Download files into the same folder. Click on the 'xxxx.part01.exe' file and the film will self extract. (For Mac) You need a Command Line Archiver like Rar for Mac OS X' |
| 2by4.part01.exe 2by4.part03.rar 2by4.part05.rar 2by4.part07.rar | 2by4.part02.rar 2by4.part04.rar 2by4.part06.rar 2by4.part08.rar |
| Method 2.) Download and rejoin files with a program like HJ Split/Join (For PC) and (For Mac) use either MacHacha or Split and Concat. |
| 2by4.avi.001 2by4.avi.003 2by4.avi.005 2by4.avi.007 | 2by4.avi.002 2by4.avi.004 2by4.avi.006 2by4.avi.008 |
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