Middle Men

This one was given the Distributor Bum's Rush by whoever makes those kind of decisions, but it deserves better. Every Character on Screen is really unlikable and not even that interesting. However, they are welcome Screen Sleaze, Criminals, Low-Lifes, Pornographers, and the best of the lot, a delusional "Middle Man" Fixer type that fancies Himself some sort of Hands-Off, Masturbatory outlet.

Internet Ticket Taker/Porn Provider is what He becomes, all the while telling Himself, and the Viewer in an ongoing Voice-over, that He is an innocent Family Man of the Norman Rockwell persuasion. Talk about denial. This has an extremely derivative Movie Style that never makes any attempt to hide its Homage/Theft. Starting out as a Whacked Comedy it slowly moves to Neo-Noir territory and is better for it.

The Crime Story mixed with Dark Comedy works the best and the Wild Slapstick and over Acting from the two Central Figures gets unwelcome every time they show up and show off. The Movie looks great and is mostly effective, but sometimes becomes disjointed with a lot of Subplots and a whole lot of Characters sliding in and out.

Overall, not bad and worth a view if nothing New.

...it's a billing service That's what our Main Middleman keeps telling himself. But, of course it is porn, billions of dollars worth. Fast-paced, with a rogue's gallery of out-there characters, particularly Rabisi, of course, in his element, I love how everyone keeps turning on each other, then realigning, then turning again, it never stops! Based on Real Life! Better than fiction, a real fun ride

Great watch, would watch again, and can recommend (if your not offended by the adult video industry).

It's oddly not explicit about the AV industry, but it's more about business and dealing with the mob.

There is a mix of genres, a little bit of everything without losing too much quality or reality. Even being dated doesn't seem to affect the movie's quality. The heart of the movie is the comedic writing for these serious situations in a very Like Wilson type of fashion.

Its a great watch in chaotic story telling and a nice balance of multiple storylines.

In "Middle Men", Luke Wilson is a man caught in the middle between legitimate businesses and pornography. Both he and the film are caught somewhere between a documentary and a porno. With an interesting enough story about the beginnings of internet commerce, the film probably gets enough facts right to be able to say, "based on a true story".

Giovanni Ribisi and Gabriel Macht humorously play two drugged out "geniuses" with lots of ideas but no sense. When they create internet commerce and apply it to pornography they need straight man Jack Harris (Wilson) to turn it into a legit business. But before long they get him caught up in a world of money, drugs and porn stars, and then everybody needs help climbing out of that. Even the film. It loses some of its structure as we meet Russian mobsters, beautiful women and more money than you can even keep track of.

"Middle Men" is particularly well acted and interesting enough especially about a recent historical story that isn't very well known, that it can mostly be forgiven for its poor structure and confusion of genres. In between the documentary and pornography, we have comedy, crime and drama, and most other genres you can name.

I agree with the critics who say Gallo (director) borrowed heavily from Scorcese, and I might even add the background music choices seemed to be "Scorcesian". However, if you can get past that, you might find the movie fairly entertaining and at times hilarious, thanks to some quite original plot twists and turns. Wilson, Ribisi, Cain, Sherbedgia and the rest of the crew were well cast. It's sad that there's total dross that reaps tens of millions of dollars at the box office, while something that's far from a stinker such as this earned a pitiful $700,000, but perhaps the R rating had something to do with it. There actually is not a lot of nudity or sex in the movie, except for a fair bit of amusing talk and suggestive scenes about male masturbation, which is there to poke fun at the porn industry.