Red Ezra receives no credit in Andre Madness/Nic Andrews' followup film HEARTS AND MINDS 2, but the spirit of his classic 2002 nostalgia/porn/war romance video lives on. More ambitious followup was extremely well-made and impressed me with its ability to simulate a real movie, quite rare in 21st Century XXX projects.
Red's concept was to look back at World War II romantically with the yearning on the home front and for soldiers in combat to return to normalcy and be together again with their loved ones. The vignettes were without dialog but potent in presenting explicit sex with feeling.
Writer-producer Andrews has gone one step further by presenting us well-directed (by Andre Madness) scenes of the war itself. A marine squad headed by Tommy Gunn (convincing in the role though he retained his trademark mustache -probably against regulations) is on a rescue mission to bring back survivors from a helicopter crash during the Iraq war.
When they arrive everyone's dead and the small squad (half a dozen soldiers) is pinned down, waiting for their own rescue the following day.
Film alternates battle scenes, well-staged with believable gunfire, explosions and combat activity one would expect in a Hollywood B-movie, but far above the token effort one associates with porn, plus five XXX sex sequences. The sex is flashbacks to the home front and has a fine cast executing the explicit action.
First up the femme soldier Cassandra Cruz is taking a sponge bath and daydreaming to a flashback of deep throating Anthony Rosano, almost unrecognizable with a buzz-cut hair cut.
Second flashback is reminiscent of the first HEARTS & MINDS, as soldier Seth Dickens is back home humping cute redhead Marie McCray, ending in a cream-pie which is extremely fake looking - the liquid streaming out of her like an outtake from Walerian Borowczyk's famous art-house porn film THE BEAST.
Vignette #3 is a strange one, as Samantha Ryan sends a live Skype -style message to Black boyfriend Tyler Knight, and performs live in arousing lesbian sex with gal pal Celeste Star to turn him on. Knight gets to do dramatic war scenes, but for some reason is cheated out of XXX action this time, simply acting as voyeur.
The beautiful Sadie West stars in next segment, torn right out of Red Ezra's play-book, as she services Jack Lawrence while he's fixing up his cherry race car, a '65 Daytona Coupe. This XXX music video style vignette resembles exactly many Ezra prototype scenes, notably Julian's in LOVE MACHINE. A real oddity (for me) exists as IMDb lists Lawrence as nom de porn for Steve Crest, who has played cops (bit parts?) in an endless list of recent non-sex movies -at his current rate he could become "the hardest working man in show biz".
There's a violent battle with Gunn getting shot, cuing some tragic moments for members of our squad and a heart-felt finale of Gunn humping his wife Ashlynn Brooke that completes the film's prologue which begins with her at home.
In a way Madness and Andrews have topped Red in terms of whipping up some true feeling for these characters, no mean feat in porn where getting the viewer aroused is generally the Prime Directive. Hopefully an audience still exists (this film is now 7 years old) for Adult entertainment that delivers more than generic raw sex.
Red's concept was to look back at World War II romantically with the yearning on the home front and for soldiers in combat to return to normalcy and be together again with their loved ones. The vignettes were without dialog but potent in presenting explicit sex with feeling.
Writer-producer Andrews has gone one step further by presenting us well-directed (by Andre Madness) scenes of the war itself. A marine squad headed by Tommy Gunn (convincing in the role though he retained his trademark mustache -probably against regulations) is on a rescue mission to bring back survivors from a helicopter crash during the Iraq war.
When they arrive everyone's dead and the small squad (half a dozen soldiers) is pinned down, waiting for their own rescue the following day.
Film alternates battle scenes, well-staged with believable gunfire, explosions and combat activity one would expect in a Hollywood B-movie, but far above the token effort one associates with porn, plus five XXX sex sequences. The sex is flashbacks to the home front and has a fine cast executing the explicit action.
First up the femme soldier Cassandra Cruz is taking a sponge bath and daydreaming to a flashback of deep throating Anthony Rosano, almost unrecognizable with a buzz-cut hair cut.
Second flashback is reminiscent of the first HEARTS & MINDS, as soldier Seth Dickens is back home humping cute redhead Marie McCray, ending in a cream-pie which is extremely fake looking - the liquid streaming out of her like an outtake from Walerian Borowczyk's famous art-house porn film THE BEAST.
Vignette #3 is a strange one, as Samantha Ryan sends a live Skype -style message to Black boyfriend Tyler Knight, and performs live in arousing lesbian sex with gal pal Celeste Star to turn him on. Knight gets to do dramatic war scenes, but for some reason is cheated out of XXX action this time, simply acting as voyeur.
The beautiful Sadie West stars in next segment, torn right out of Red Ezra's play-book, as she services Jack Lawrence while he's fixing up his cherry race car, a '65 Daytona Coupe. This XXX music video style vignette resembles exactly many Ezra prototype scenes, notably Julian's in LOVE MACHINE. A real oddity (for me) exists as IMDb lists Lawrence as nom de porn for Steve Crest, who has played cops (bit parts?) in an endless list of recent non-sex movies -at his current rate he could become "the hardest working man in show biz".
There's a violent battle with Gunn getting shot, cuing some tragic moments for members of our squad and a heart-felt finale of Gunn humping his wife Ashlynn Brooke that completes the film's prologue which begins with her at home.
In a way Madness and Andrews have topped Red in terms of whipping up some true feeling for these characters, no mean feat in porn where getting the viewer aroused is generally the Prime Directive. Hopefully an audience still exists (this film is now 7 years old) for Adult entertainment that delivers more than generic raw sex.