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Men Amongst the Ruins
Rating: 4 Stars
Produced, photographed, and directed by Kristen Bjorn. Music by Matt Locke. Starring Slava Petrovich, Max Veneziano, Rafael Alencar, Andres Duranza, Savio Silva, Lucius Socrates, Julio Vidal, Lucas Andrades, Marcus Ocean, Juan Jimenez, David Chelsea, Attila Sipos, Jeremy Shelton, Ken Mifune, Matthieu Costa, Octavio Fuentes, Cesar Moreno, Dade County, and Sergio del Castillo.
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Kristen Bjorn keeps accessing the tropical ambiance of southern Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean as if plugging into a power source. In Men Amongst the Ruins, working with a 19-man international cast, he returns to this approximate locale for the fifth consecutive time. The action centers on a cluster of abandoned Spanish colonial buildings that might once have comprised a mission, a fortress, or both. (The setting is a composite of locations rather than an actual place.) Whatever purposes the complex may have served, it's now chiefly a venue for man-to-man sex.

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This multinational, multiracial cruising area has its sinister side, as Slava Petrovich discovers when he enters the ruins alone and is relieved of his knapsack by thieves. Helping themselves to cash Petrovich was toting around in his bag, the muggers discard the knapsack and flee. They're spotted, however, by Max Veneziano, who retrieves the knapsack, looks inside, and finds Petrovich's passport and a copy of Mandate featuring pictures of the toothsome Russian. Entranced, Veneziano starts imagining sex with Petrovich in swanky surroundings.

The principal sex scenes, extended in some instances through cross-cutting, encompass a foursome, a threesome, a second foursome at the thieves' hideout, and a six-man orgy back at the ruins. Directed by Bjorn with his usual impassioned magic, the action includes wild rounds of cocksucking, fuck trains, double penetration, and semen ingestion. The five dozen or more cumshots include a few copious, point-blank salvos into grateful faces.

The intensity of Max Veneziano's daydreamed one-on-one vignettes matches that of some of the more populated set pieces. Veneziano now has lightened, close-cropped hair; his improved, near-perfect muscle definition is accentuated more than ever by his tattoos, especially the tribal curlicues spilling over his shoulder. Usually this alpha Venetian is a top; here, in one of his reveries, he comes while being gloriously fucked by Petrovich. When the two eventually meet in reality, their closing moment together feels lifeless and perfunctory (not to mention downbeat), but most viewers will be too blissed-out to care.