For a gay themed movie, this is extremely polished and well-done; perfect acting, great editing, compelling sound-track and most of all an excellent script with on-point dialogue. Given my review is "late in the game" I won't bother with a synopsis. I will say that for a plot of the day in the life of a male prostitute, this absolutely gave the viewer something extraordinary and atypical of the genre (because yes...it's been done before, as admitted in the film itself with the references to "My Own Private Idaho"). There are many layers to this film and in fact to the lead character, as we find out through his acting AND the dialogue that he indeed takes on the personas of the people he is about to have sex with (and he could only accomplish this if he were a very polished actor...which he definitely appears to be). This film delves into the human psyche and asks the question if we are ALL pretending/trying to be someone we are not/putting on a show for others. A very well done and IMHO underrated film.

I almost turned this off as it was a little slow in the beginning. I actually switched it with another DVD I had rented and went back to it , and I'm glad that I did. Often films in this genre fall into the terrible trap of many 'gay' movies (let's find an example to get the clothes off of the hot guy), this actually turned out to be a great example of independent film of any genre. It took a severely dark turn in the scene with the Russian client, and from there I was hooked. I could tell the director had something to say here. The cast is well chosen and seasoned enough to bring a good game to the film. Often a smaller film has to cast actors who don't have enough experience to flesh out a real character, but these guys are fine. I'm often leery of a film 'written and directed' by the same person because something usually suffers. It's usually a great script that looks like it was shot on a camera phone, or it's filled with great artistic shots and angles full of plodding delivery of a lame script, but Graham is adept at both here. I almost returned it unwatched, but am glad I went back to it.

O-kay... I hadn't read any reviews prior watching, so for a blank page like me THAT was a torture to watch. I don't know if its done for a reason. It could be - that's what I thought in the end, when the main idea became clear. Anyway, miraculously, "Strapped" turned up to be a highly rewarding movie, and while I still can't say I enjoyed watching it, I don't suppose one hour and a half is too high a price for what you get in the end.Thank you, Joseph Graham. That was truly a pleasure when a maze turned into a labyrinth.

I promise you I've seen porn movies with better plot. Actually, don't expect a plot, there is no any. No scene worth remembering either. The dialogs are the poorest you'll find in cinema. The characters lack any depth whatsoever. They are all one dimensional. This movie is intellectually offensive, visually poor, artistically waste of people's time. An eclectic, dysfunctional sum of terrible gay clichés (the hustler for example does everything except kiss. We haven't seen that before). You may think, well, it might be a sexy movie worth watching for the actors and the sex scenes. Wrong. There is hardly a sex scene that the average gay viewer will find sexy. You will not see men making love or anything of that sort. Shallow, empty, and very unintelligent movie on all levels. One highlight - the Russian guy in the first scene is beautiful to watch. Watch the first scene if you can and walk away.