PORN TO BE MILD
Middle Men
*
Review by Joel Frost
Imitation, it’s said, is the sincerest form of flattery. So it should have surprised no one that the internet imitated cable television in certain ways as it began to grow in the 1990s. Content was needed, and, as Giovanni Ribisi’s character laments in an early scene in “Middle Men”, George Gallo’s re-telling of the formative years of web porn, “there’s nothing to whack off to on the internet”. Someone was bound to marry the two things, and it should also surprise no one that it was a couple of sleaze-balls who managed to not just supply a lot of that early content, but, more importantly, make it financially viable. “Middle Men” tells us that a couple of guys named Buck and Wayne (Gabriel Macht and Ribisi) were the dopey-savant duo who put together the first pay-porn site on the internet, via a program that took credit card numbers from customers online.
Sounds simple enough, right? The internet was fairly uncharted territory in the mid-90’s, but getting people to buy sex, or a reasonable facsimile of it, is the easiest trick in the book. Soon though, Wayne and Buck have somehow managed to sell a significant percentage of their new income stream to the Russian Mob and the wild-haired Nikita Sokolov (Rade Serbedzija). He can provide the two entrepreneurs with more and better content, via his stable of strippers. Wayne and Buck are stricken with an alarming lack of imagination though, despite their minor stroke of inspiration, and soon find themselves at odds with Sokolov over their desire to spend all their recent riches. The windfall from those who jerk off has turned these two jerkoffs into coked-up Vegas train-wrecks who don’t pay their debts, and the Mob is displeased.
Enter Jack Harris (Luke Wilson), the guy who’s been narrating the film so far. He’s a respectable businessman out of Houston who is hooked into the proceedings by a seedy business associate, Jerry Haggerty (James Caan). Like Wayne and Buck, he’s got some money troubles, so he allows himself to get involved in a business that he and his wife Diana (Jacinda Barrett, over a decade removed from MTV’s “The Real World”) don’t really approve of.
So, here we have porn, drugs, sleaze, money, violence, Vegas and a voice-over. Mobsters and hookers, Humvees and hummers. The trappings of a modern-day cautionary tale about the rise and fall of some eager, desperate, and naive men and the women who “love” them. It all looks enticing, titillating even. There’s an R-rating. There are jiggly camera shots and jiggly other things. Giovani Ribisi plays a coked-up dumb-ass. Who’s this George Gallo guy? Well, hmm… he has “The Whole Ten Yards” (screenplay) and “Homeland Security” (writer/director) on his resumé. Not promising, but not prohibitive either, as long as he doesn’t take this opportunity to mix every easy cliché that any film-maker ever stole from Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, and Paul Thomas Anderson and put them in a cuisinart with a couple of Tony Scott films and hit frappé.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what he does. Apparently the proper way to depict unstable people in drugged-up and violent situations is to wobble the camera, make quick cuts to close-ups, and insist that your actors yell all the time. At least, that’s a loose interpretation of how some of the aforementioned, much better directors sometimes manage to depict and convey unsettling situations and moods. “Middle Men” has a laundry list of moments that seem eager to earnestly evoke some of the techniques and devices that certain other directors have used with much success. Gallo doesn’t present homage, though. He presents a hack-job. The “Goodfellas”-inspired narration by Wilson and the use of the music of The Rolling Stones, among other things, are clear allusions to Scorsese. The occasional Mexican stand-off, thank you Tarantino. The cocaine-assisted haze juxtaposed with a sudden starkly contrasting event and/or epiphany. Here’s your royalty check, Mr. Anderson.
It’s no crime to borrow and reference one’s betters. Tarantino is a clear disciple of Scorsese in many ways. Anderson owes to both of them, and they all owe to directors before them, sometimes perhaps in ways that can expose them momentarily as not quite the geniuses they often seem to be. George Gallo, however, will never be mistaken for any kind of genius, as long as he continues to slap-dash the most recognizable parts of other people’s work into a soulless construction that’s meant to lead an audience through a story that Mr. Gallo clearly has no original ideas about how to address. “Middle Men” sounds great in concept, but what George Gallo has done is make the most cloying, pandering version of this story… one that could have been deliciously icky and hair-raising. His lack of originality and apparent fear of departing from the tropes that the story and screenplay seem to lean toward are in shining display here. He cannot be forgiven for falling victim to an immovable script, bad as it is, because he is a co-writer of the script (with Andy Weiss). He is thoroughly to blame.
Luke Wilson, not our best actor, sleep-walks through his part. At times, it seems as though some of the actors (Ribisi and Barrett, in particular) are trying desperately to break free of the limitations of the script and production in general. There’s a welcome interruption by the fairly captivating Laura Ramsey (porn star Audrey Dawns) and a somehow understated showing by Kevin Pollak. Really, though, no one in this film, including Wilson and the great James Caan, can be fully faulted for his or her performance. Gallo backs them all into the same boring corner.
It’s a charitable saying, that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, yet the saying is often misinterpreted. Sincerity is the absence of artifice. It is the window through which one can witness the soul of the imitator. Ideally, that sincerity leads to a clarity of vision and interpretation that honors the flattered. Either way, upon investigation, an imitator will be exposed. George Gallo is splayed open as an unimaginative copycat here, and “Middle Men” is a middling movie, at best, because of that.
Directed by: George Gallo
Release Date: August 6, 2010
Run Time: 105 Minutes
Country: USA
Rated: R
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
