Middle Men

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.

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.

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.

I've always been a fan of Luke Wilson, and have preferred his work over Owen's. Middle Men is not your typical Luke Wilson comedy, It's much rather a cross between a Guy Ritchie and Martin Scorsese movie. That's not a bad thing by any means. What Middle Men will do is keep you entertained and engaged from beginning to end. Whether it's Wayne & Buck arguing back and forth, or Jack's ability or lack thereof,of balancing his family life and business.

The cast is pretty impressive with James Caan and Kevin Pollack also lending their talents. Everyone played their part well especially Giovanni Ribisi's performance as the coke'd up "Wayne Beering". His mannerism's and habit's were entertaining.

Overall I loved this film for what it was, a dark comedy centred around the internet porn industry. The soundtrack is great, which i might add is very "Scorsese esque". Loved the use of 2 Pac's California Love =) It's an intelligent film full of dark humour about pornography. My only gripes with Middle Men would be the pacing of the story, i feel if they had a longer runtime it would have flowed through effortlessly. They are minor issues though, they balanced the comedy well with the crime elements of the plot. It should be said that "Middle Men" is very underrated, and I would recommend it to fan's of dark humour and pornography, which after watching this movie, is every male living on the planet. Check it out, you won't regret it.