Review 1
I guess I would never tire of Kristen Bjorn movies. They are the most erotic and outstanding of their kind, and they warrant praise for a number of reasons. First, the models are absolutely the best you will find, and secondly, the quality of the story lines as well as the locations and musical scores make them superior to most videos of this type.
Men Amongst the Ruins is one of Kristen.s hottest and most exotic videos ever! I know I.ve said this before, but they just keep getting better and better. Entirely set within and around the walls of ancient ruins, this is a tale of romance, lust, and the endless pursuit of hot sex. What more can you ask for to keep your juices flowing?
-Brad Benedict, AMBUSH
Review 2
Kristen Bjorn's new epic, Men Amongst the Ruins, finds him at the top of his form, again delivering an international cast that performs with heated fervor in an exquisitely photographed foreign setting. Here, the exotic location is a group of crumbling, abandoned ruins -- what once may have been an elegant enclave of South or Central American public buildings but what has now become a popular cruising ground. Every city has one of these spots, but here it is strikingly picturesque, and the cast is filled with gorgeous men of the sort one rarely finds in such secret sites of anonymous sex.
Not content to rest on his laurels and merely repeat what he has done so well so often, however, Bjorn here experiments with a different structuring of his sex scenes. Any fan of the renowned director knows that he takes three or four days to shoot each scene (which accounts for the three or four sets of pop shots that pepper each sequence), but here he breaks up several of the scenes and sprinkles pieces of them throughout this film. The result is that we are treated to encore after unexpected encore, and the device -- especially with regard to the film's two splendiferous stars, Slava Petrovich and Max Veneziano -- ties the whole film together and gives it great forward thrust. There are five separate sexual interludes in the film, but it feels as if there were a dozen.
The opening of the film introduces the various men who have made their way to the deserted ruins for an afternoon of impersonal sex, and soon Bjorn's all-seeing camera follows a pair of them (Savio Silva and Lucius Socrates) into a private corner where they begin kissing, dick-dueling and fully-clothed cocksucking. Within moments, they are interrupted by another couple (Andres Duranza and Rafael Alencar) who have opted for the same secluded place to get it on. After brief glances and knowing smiles, each couple goes at it, alternately watching and performing for the other. Socrates and Duranza kneel to suck their partners' oversized erections, and soon the first round of money shots has been fired off. The action then cuts to the second tableau, this time with Socrates and Duranza shoving their cocks through the carved wooden bars of a large window for Alencar and Silva to reciprocate. All are skilled oralists, all share searing eye contact, and all are given to soft spurts of sex talk as they detonate the second set of money shots.
The action then cuts away from them to doe-eyed, long-maned Petrovich (the star of the award-winning Moscow) as he strolls idly about. As is so often the case in such places, however, the element of danger lurks just beyond every corner, and suddenly a trio of hunky thieves has grabbed his backpack and vanished into the labyrinth of doorways to nowhere. Hastily, the backpack is rifled for the money within, then tossed aside, but it is soon retrieved by Veneziano, who discovers inside it a passport and a skin magazine -- with Petrovich on the cover and an explicit layout within. The photos titillate him, and soon he is fantasizing an encounter with the tall, sinewy Russian.
His fantasy is set on the terrace of an elegant mansion where these two demi-gods waste no time in melting into passionate kisses. Within seconds, Veneziano opens Petrovich's fly, and the hard cock lurking there springs forth. Then he leans back for his own fly to be opened, and his amazing erection stabs into the air. Veneziano, the blond behemoth who made such a dazzling debut in Under the Big Top, has spent far too much time since then defacing his magnificent body with one tattoo after another (more than a dozen now), and he has shaved off his glorious shock of hair for a near-skinhead look. Even so, he still vibrates with sexual allure, and he gives Petrovich soul-shattering head and brings him off by hand before the fantasy reverts to the reality of the ruins.
As Veneziano begins his search for the Russian, he comes upon the two couples from the first scene, now an intertwined quartet, rimming with such gusto that one of them (Duranza) erupts with Alencar's tongue up his ass. The multi-positioned fucking that follows demonstrates the versatility of each and culminates in a train fuck, superbly captured from below, confirming once and for all that Bjorn is Master of the Undershot.
The nine (count 'em!) money shots of the sequence send Veneziano back into his fantasy, where Petrovich is waiting to take his turn at sucking. With the enthusiasm of a devoted puppy, he does not so much give head to Veneziano's ever-ready erection as make love to it. And then -- to the delight of all concerned, including the viewer -- the fantasy hurtles into big, butch Veneziano, sprawled on a table, legs in the air, offering his (onscreen) cherry ass to Petrovich. To the percussion of heavy breathing, the skewered giant moans and groans in amazement, strokes himself throughout and gets his nut while being fucked. Petrovich also spills a torrent of spooge before the fantasy ends, and Veneziano resumes his search for the real dream man.
Along the way, he passes a tattooed mulatto (Lucas Andrades) and a beefy brunet (Julio Vidal) connecting under a gated archway. He watches for a moment, then moves off, but Bjorn's camera lingers on the pair. Soon they are approached by a curious voyeur (blond, gym-built Marcus Ocean) who pounds off his first load before joining them for a rim-suck servicing of the stocky Vidal. After two sets of oral money shots, the trio adjourns to a deserted hallway to fuck off two more sets of impressive ejaculations. Andrades explodes twice, one while being rimmed, one while being fucked, but it is Vidal's fountains of jism that are the most impressive of the sequence.
Meanwhile, the boss of the thieves (the masterful Juan Jiminez) discovers that one of his underlings (Bjorn veteran Attila Sipos) has skimmed off some of the stolen money and decides to punish him in the way such sins are always punished in explicit films: Sipos must service not only Jiminez but two other gang members (the beautiful Jeremy Shelton and the ferret-like David Chelsea). After all four bring each other off by hand, they settle into a tower tableau for some serious sucking and another round of pop shots in a deserted courtyard. Next they break into pairs, with Shelton happily fucking Sipos (and adding ass-eating to his onscreen repertoire in a series of tongue-jabbing close-ups) while Celsea kneels nearby to gobble down Jiminez. The sequence ends with Shelton and Jiminez double-fucking Chelsea as he sucks Sipos. Most amazing of all, Chelsea explodes in a seven-geyser pop shot (while double-plugged) that is the best of the film.
Veneziano, of course, is busily continuing his fantasy that has now shifted to a portrait-filled, castle-like room where the two stars continue to luxuriate in kissing, frottage, mutual sucking, foreskin play and rimming before Veneziano finally invades Petrovich's granite ass, half on, half off a big fourposter bed. Their turbulent fuck, the high point of the entire film, drives Petrovich to his most copious money shot thus far, and it is followed by Veneziano's no-hand explosion all over those perfect Russian glutes. A passionate kiss ends the scene but not the film.
Men Amongst the Ruins is a two-and-a-half hour film in the mail order version, two hours in the retail version, but the scene that follows the final Petrovich-Veneziano coupling -- an energetic sextet (Octavio Fuentes, Mattiheu Costa, Ken Mifune, Dade County, Cesar Morena, and especially, Sergio Del Castillo) going at it every which way feels anticlimactic, too much of a good thing, even though it is vintage Bjorn. (For viewers already drained, the scene can always be watched another day.) Finally, for cum mavens, the film is a gold mine -- there are (as best we could count) 64 messy money shots in the film. And, oh, yes, Veneziano does finally find the real Petrovich -- but the ending is not what you'd expect. You'll want to see that for yourself. Rating: 4 stars.
- Jerry Douglas, GAY CHICAGO MAGAZINE
Review 3
In MEN AMONGST THE RUINS, Kristen Bjorn brings magical realism, the everyday is turned into the awesome, and the supernatural is accorded the same acceptance as prosaic reality. The extended scene between Petrovich and Veneziano is the most lyrical Bjorn has filmed in a long time. The ardor seems genuine, and of course Bjorn orchestrates the set, the lighting, the body positions, the camera angles and every last detail for maximum erotic effect. It should make you swoon.
-Onan The Vulgarian, X FACTOR
Review 4
Trying to keep track of the cum shots in a Kristen Bjorn epic is next to impossible. The jizz flows so fast and so freely from every corner of the screen, viewers will easily miss a squirt as they drool over the dripping spooge of another stud. Yet another winner from Bjorn raises the bar for sex with wall-to-wall cum shots, fuck chains, a double penetration, real rimming, and 19 stunning men with perpetual hard-ons. Pre-nom Best Group Scene, Best Foreign Release, and Best Director. Rating: 5 stars.
-Brandy Jansen, ADULT VIDEO NEWS
Review 5
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.
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. Rating: 4 stars.
-Jim D'Entremont, THE GUIDE