Tattoo Bar

Sol doesn't knit the complicated story into a coherent flow, but there are many visually striking moments along the way.

The problem with the baroque and overripe Tattoo Bar is that everybody has a past. And there's so much crosscutting to those pasts in flashbacks, it's hard to keep track of whose past you're witnessing.

I just found it really difficult to follow – not completely believing the motivations of certain characters, nor how some characters would just completely vanish, seemingly without a trace. This film made my head hurt.

With all the glossy sex, you'd be forgiven for thinking Zalman King was directing, except that even King knows you don't need such a ludicrously complicated plot to show pretty people having sex. Each character is so burdened with gratuitous back story that it's exhausting trying to separate the grain from the chaff, until you realize none of it matters at all.

Simple tale is made unnecessarily complex by script's desire to give everything a metaphysical flavor, characters are across-the-board disagreeable and portentous art-school atmospherics are barely redeemed by occasionally good dialogue and a strong visual sense.

This tale of a sprung tough looking to go straight is so familiar it's faceless.