Stripped of all contrivances, Quentin Lee's stilted thriller Ethan Mao has a truthful core: Many gay teenagers are estranged from their families after coming out, and the fallout can be devastating if they're not yet ready, emotionally or financially, to get booted from the nest. Then again, without contrivances, the movie would only run about five minutes. Rather than grapple with the ordinary trauma of a young man ostracized, Lee gooses up the tension with an amateur restaging of The Desperate Hours, with home invasion serving as an extreme form of psychotherapy. Apparently, Ethan Mao's characters can't get real without a loaded gun to their heads. But the moment that gun is holstered, the threat disappears and the drama evaporates in kind.
Much like Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the recent Mysterious Skin, the title character in Ethan Mao comes of age through a cruel deflowering that leaves him condemned to the dangerous life of a hustler. But the similarities aren't particularly flattering: From his first appearance in Mysterious Skin, Gordon-Levitt evokes a lost and beautiful soul, deeply bruised yet resilient and wildly charismatic. By contrast, Ethan's Jun Hee Lee registers as a complete blank, a self-absorbed, pitiable creature who's unworthy of the trouble he brings to everyone's doorstep. After Lee's vindictive father (Raymond Ma) kicks him to the curb, he starts hustling on the Strip, where a more schooled young streetwalker (Jerry Hernandez) offers him shelter and takes him under his wing. On Thanksgiving Day, Lee sneaks into his family's suburban home to steal a diamond necklace, the sole memento left behind by his late, beloved mother. But when his father, wicked stepmother (Julia Nickson), and two brothers return unexpectedly, the robbery quickly escalates into a hostage situation.
In order for this scenario to work dramatically, there has to be the specter of constant danger, an itchy trigger-finger away from irreversible tragedy, but before long, nerves settle and boredom sets in. Though a stubborn, scolding, and joyless figure, the father doesn't seem as unreasonable as Lee makes him out to be, and Lee's bullying stepbrother (Kevin Kleinberg) turns from thug to pussycat within minutes. That leaves Nickson, whose vamping performance belongs in another movie, or perhaps better yet, in some drag-queen burlesque. After her injured husband loses blood on the wrong garment and she screams, "My nightgown from Saks!", Ethan Mao has officially peaked.