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Moscow: The Power of Submission
Rating: 4 Stars
Sarava Productions. Produced by Kristen Bjorn. Directed by The Bear. Videography by Nicolai Pyrov. Edited by Kristen Bjorn and The Bear. Starring Slava Petrovich, Alexander Byazrov, Kirill Veronkov, Yegor Seleznyov, Nestor Firsov, Boris Vladimirovich, Dima Chicay, Pyotr Chernov, Anton Sekhin, and Vanya Viktorovich.
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Barry Gollop, known as The Bear (a play on his first name, not a comment on his physique), has worked as Kristen Bjorn's chief assistant in at least 14 productions. In Moscow: The Power of Submission, he takes over as director. Some sexual situations in this handsomely turned-out epic are stilted, but during his symbiotic working partnership with one of the finest gay porn directors in the world, The Bear has clearly absorbed a great deal. It's also apparent that some of Bjorn's trademark flourishes must have been Gollop's ideas in the first place.

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I> Moscow is the happy result of a nine-week location shoot. The sometimes murky story unfolds in 1986 during the Soviet Union's last gasp, a time when Red Army soldiers are expected to snitch on one another, the KGB bullies everyone, and underwear is scarce. Brooding by the Volga, Corporal Slava Petrovich is arrested and spirited off to KGB headquarters, where he's stripped, photographed, anally probed, and questioned about his knowledge of a man named Sasha (Alexander Byazrov). The plot threads through and around four principal sex scenes and subsidiary sketches populated by a superb cast of Russian newcomers. Most of the sex involves the eroticism of coercion, with the powerful making sexual use of underlings.

There's considerable group action. Kinky touches include use of a penis cage and fetishistic attention to feet. This is also the spoogiest gay video in recent memory. Many of the cum shots are airborne Bjornian hands-free spurts, but at one point Byazrov ejaculates into a condom that he empties over Petrovich's back. Gollop's most impressive directorial achievement, in fact, is the duo between Petrovich and Byazrov, an exquisite sequence full of back-and-forth fucking that's sustained for an astonishing 40 minutes.

Be warned that the retail version of this video has been shortened without Gollop's participation. To see Moscow the way it should be seen, order the 160-minute, two cassette "director's cut" directly from Kristen Bjorn Productions.