The Escort (2015)

Enjoyable, Good movie for a rainy afternoon!Grab beverage, get your favorite Blanket, and give the dog a treat! I recommend it.

Mitch Cooper (Michael Doneger) chases anonymous sex online in L.A. He's at a hotel bar waiting for another date when Natalie (Lyndsy Fonseca) shows up. She's actually a high price escort working the bar. The mix up does not go well. Mitch gets fired as a reporter. He struggles to find another job and decides to write about the escort world. He goes back to the bar to find Natalie as his subject.This is a lower budget indie. The guy is lackluster. Fonseca is really the only reason that I started watching this. This tries to be a little humorous with limited success. She has a bit of sass. There are references to Pretty Woman but this is not even in the ballpark. The couple has no chemistry. It's not particularly sexy or fun or dark or poignant or anything. Fonseca gets it part of the way but it doesn't really get there.

I chose this film while randomly perusing Amazon Prime's lists, a strange new occupation I find a lot of us pursuing of late. I was looking for something in the vein of a Sebastian Gutierrez indie flick. I chose the movie based entirely on the description and poster, something I never do any more as my time is too precious to gamble on a bad movie. I was rewarded with a pleasant, if unremarkable, film that I'd definitely recommend, but for reasons other than the obvious ones. It wasn't bad and had a decent story but that's not what prompted me to write a review about it.In downtown LA a young woman is earning her keep as a high-priced sexual escort and a young aspiring writer has lost his job and is looking for a good story. He's also addicted to an "instant hookup" app and ends up meeting our lady of the night in a bar when he thinks she's his next match. They form a partnership where he gets his story (about her) in return for watching over her while she deals with unsavory men, and if you can't guess what happens next this is probably the first movie you've ever seen.I found the first 20 minutes or so enticing; the cast was attractive, the dialog crisp, the acting sit-com level or higher and since it opened with a woman having "specialty" sex and the male lead tramping around, it seemed like a film that was going to have an edge to it. It doesn't, and in fact it ends up being lighter fare, topically, than anything you'd see on prime time TV, but it passed the time. I started checking my phone at the half-hour mark and never really engaged again after that but I didn't turn it off either.What really sold me on this film, and has kept me thinking about it for days, was the soundtrack. Not since the 80s or 90s can I think of a movie where I was so intrigued by the music playing underneath scenes and transitions, and the way it flavored my experience of this film. I've spent a lot of time in downtown LA and thereabouts and with the great photography and soundtrack the filmmakers really got the "feel" of the area right. It's not as easy a thing to do as one might imagine; making a film that accurately portrays a location isn't as simple as just planting a camera there, you have to get the feel of it right.I'm also intrigued by films that are focused on sex but don't actually include any sexual content. There are a couple of fully-clothed "humping" scenes in this movie but it's all fairly innocent and unobtrusive. It reminds you that a steamy sex scene with full nudity isn't always necessary to make a point. Films made before the ratings game came into play in the late 60s or so had to rely on technique rather than bared skin to convey sexual tension. Again...how it "feels" rather than simply how rutting looks when you focus a camera on it. It's not a common practice any more and I have no qualms about showing sexuality and nudity, it's just intriguing when it ISN'T shown, especially in a film that is ostensibly about a woman who sells her sexuality for a living.Lastly, I found it interesting that the movie seems to take place in a world populated mostly by Caucasians. It's not something I really thought about until I saw this movie; the idea that these people dwell downtown but rarely encounter any racial (or gender, for that matter) diversity seems odd. Again, having spent a lot of time in these locations it's unlikely to say the least. It's not a judgment call, I'm wasn't offended, just intrigued...had the film been made 15-20 years ago it wouldn't have even crossed my mind.Anyway, worth a look, which is actually quite an accomplishment.

Getting right into it:1. Do I believe the story?Sure. Sex addicted guy struggling with self esteem, work & family issues meets kind, pretty girl with the perfect resume struggling to overcome an infamously tarnished adolescence who finds herself working as a high end escort to achieve her dreams while she's still young & pretty. What's not to believe?2. Do I care about the story?Absolutely. In fact, the story is what made me rate this movie 7/10.3. Do I believe the characters?Mostly. The only major flaw in The Escort was that I didn't believe Michael Doneger's Mitch to be a journalist. I believed all of the other characters, certainly Lyndsy Fonseca as Natalie, and I believed Mitch's situation and his personal life, but he just didn't convince me he was a budding young journalist, or a writer of any sort for that matter.4. Do I care about the characters? Yes. They evoke empathy. I want them to resolve their issues, to figure it out, and live happily ever after.I found The Escort to be a fun, entertaining romantic comedy, a fairy tale for adults. Flawed, but irresistible in the end. It was a bit melodramatic at times, and supporting cast played limited roles, though they played their parts well. Regarding what I consider to be the major flaw, Michael Doneger's unconvincing rendition of a journalist, even though someone may be down on their luck and/or lacking self-esteem, I still need to see a hint of aptitude, at the very least. I realize that Mitch's personal problems are affecting his professional life -- I simply need to believe that somewhere deep inside, they have potential in their chosen profession. I need to see their potential, their passion. I never saw that in Mitch.To her credit, the supporting actress who plays the female head journalist interviewing Mitch for the magazine job executes her role perfectly, particularly in the last suggestion she gives Mitch, to find his passion as a journalist. That flaw almost made me score The Escort 6/10, more in line with its average rating on IMDb, but as you can see, I gave it a higher score. Why? I really liked the story, and in the final analysis, story matters most.7 out of 10