Middle Men
Tags: murder, flashback

Plot synopsis:
In 2004 Houston, Jack Harris drives with several million dollars in a duffel bag to deliver to Russian mobsters, worried about the safety of his wife Diana and their children. In 1997 Los Angeles, Jack helps a sick friend co-managing a nightclub. Wayne Beering and Buck Dolby are best friends renting together. The drug-addicted friends are watching porn when Wayne asks why there is no porn on the internet. Buck, a former NASA scientist, takes 15 minutes to create a program to allow online credit card transactions to charge people for looking at porn on their website. They earn thousands of dollars in a matter of days. Needing more porn they approach Nikita Sokoloff, a Russian mob boss who owns a local strip club, who agrees to 25% of their business in return for letting them photograph and film his strippers.
Buck and Wayne's website is successful and they party in Las Vegas while neglecting to make payments to Sokoloff. Jack has made the LA nightclub a success and attracts the attention of Jerry Haggerty, a crooked lawyer hired by Wayne and Buck to sort out their problem with Sokoloff. Jack meets the friends and becomes a partner in the business, paying Haggerty $200,000 to get out, knowing Haggerty is under federal indictment and a threat to the business.
Sokoloff's nephew comes to collect his $400,000 profit, but when he threatens to kill Jack's family, one of Jack's body guards punches his head so hard that he falls dead. Jack and his partners dump the body in the ocean and fabricate a story that Sokoloff's nephew took the money and ran. Sokoloff is skeptical, but agrees to let it pass in return for an increase to 50% of the partnership.
Jack expands the business by dropping their porn site and focusing on the online credit card billing services. They create a billing company called "24/7 billing.com", becoming the titular Middle Men for other internet-based porn providers. The billing business is making hundreds of millions of dollars within a year. Jack becomes addicted to the money, sex and power of his new lifestyle, spends little time with his Houston family and starts a relationship with porn star Audrey Dawns.
Haggerty, bitter that Jack cut him out of what has become a multimillion-dollar partnership, schemes to take over the company. He manipulates the foolish Wayne and Buck to work with Denny Z, providing billing services for Denny's numerous child pornography websites.
Audrey's live stream porn site is watched by an international web of terrorists, which the US government uses to track and arrest or kill the terrorists. The FBI asks for Jack and Audrey's help to expand their terrorist hunt, but Wayne and Buck fear that Jack is meeting with the FBI to turn them in for the murder of Sokoloff's nephew and the child porn. The two confide in Haggerty about killing Sokoloff's nephew, which Haggerty uses to incite Sokoloff to make a move on Jack.
When Jack finds out that his partners are helping facilitate Denny Z's child porn, he confronts Denny Z at a house party. Jack sees Audrey having sex with two men at the party and realizes how much he misses his family, leading him to break up with Audrey.
An FBI agent, appreciative of the help Jack has given the government, warns him that 24/7billing.com is about to be indicted for supporting child porn. Jack's life is further complicated when Sokoloff's men kidnap his maid's son, who they believe is Jack's son. Jack gathers up several million dollars and goes to meet Sokoloff, as seen at the start of the film.
Jack is told that the boy will be released if he signs a contract giving his partnership share to Wayne, Buck, Sokoloff, and Haggerty. Jack signs the agreement but backdates it to before Denny Z's child porn business was added. Sokoloff kills Haggerty, but lets Jack go as thanks for all the money he has made him.
The movie ends with Jack's FBI friend charging Sokoloff, Wayne and Buck with providing billing services for child porn. Jack and the maid's son return home, where Diane welcomes Jack back.

Review: As a viewer I have no idea which is really true and which is fiction but one thing true is that it's never boring.Buck and Wayne are two genius guys who actually don't know that they are about to become millionaires by creating world's first porn site which requires a membership payment to access.
This is where Jack Harris comes in who is a legit business man and a problem solver who turns the already million dollar porn business in to new heights by creating a middle party online billing concept.
Except Jack who does a very smart move by creating an opportunity of out a grave danger.A good load of entertainment and some background info on how internet porn and billing has come to light from 80s.
Middle Men is a film that many should watch and understand how the possibility of purchasing products online was created.
This film offered an extremely entertaining perspective on Internet porn and offered a thrilling ride of crime fighting and hustling.
Luke Wilson who plays a level headed character finds himself in all sorts of messes and throughout this film can you really understand how a normal guy could get caught up in a crazy world.
I found myself watching this film laughing, feeling exhilarated, and intrigued to learn about another world I had no idea about (Internet Porn).
Especially, when their family is on the line.I would highly recommend this film to anyone looking to watch a tantalizing and action packed crime movie.
Middle Men is not your typical Luke Wilson comedy, It's much rather a cross between a Guy Ritchie and Martin Scorsese movie.
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.
Overall I loved this film for what it was, a dark comedy centred around the internet porn industry.
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.
True story about the men who got rich off internet porn.
A true story about the men who came up with the idea to sell adult entertainment off the internet.
After two slackers (Ribisi & Gabriel Macht) make over a million dollars in two months by coming up with a program to make money off of internet porn the Russian mob wants their cut.
Performance is great from Luke Wilson and the story goes seamless.One little, probably needless, piece of action that I didn't quite understand why it was there, is the confusion at the end with Russian mafia taking the wrong "thing", but it's probably just me and it's not that bad anyway.Definitely deserves more than the actual 6.7 it's got.
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.
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.
I didn't really know what I was getting into when I decided to watch Middle Men. It turned out it was a bittersweet experience of a story that could've really been better, with a leading man that portrays a mesmerizing central figure and holds this loose tale together.This crime/drama/comedy deals with the beginnings of the internet porn business, a subject of some interest as are most things innovative.
Luke Wilson portrays the honorable "middle man" Jack Harris, whose inner conflict is really the main attraction here.
It may not be something fundamentally new, this rift between morality and anything morally debatable like porn, nor the character type, but in a world that has lost all balance, Jack Harris is the sober rock that it revolves around.
Yet, the glamor is not being denied, the things that drive you one way or the other, and thanks to Luke Wilson's performance it gives you something to hold on to.Unfortunately, the film is mostly flimsy otherwise, despite the considerable (and generally underused) talents of Giovanni Ribisi being added to familiar faces such as James Caan, Kevin Pollack, Terry Crews and Rade Serbedzija.
Somehow it reminded me of Herzog's remake of The Bad Lieutenant, in the sense that that film went overboard in ludicrous ways, but knowing its condition helped it attain a consistent degree of entertainment.So I come to conclude that Middle Men does not quite know what it wants to be and that's a drawback.
However, there are still some good moments in the film that complement Luke Wilson's performance, even beyond the subject at hand.
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..
I ordered Middle Men because I like Luke Wilson.
It was the best decision I have made in years.Middle Men is just another example of a great movie I had never heard of because it wasn't showing in the theaters or on cable but one I should have known about.
Really liked the somewhat true story of two idiots who stumble on an early Internet cash cow through online porn payment processing.
Luke Wilson does a great job as a man who tries to hold onto his moral code while working in adult entertainment.
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.
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.
I really felt the film was well cast.Script and story are excellent, based on true events (which highlights the .com bubble from a different and interesting perspective).
Just goes to show that big budget and marketing with a studio really behind a film, makes the difference not the story, acting or direction.Should be in your must watch list..
It's our bill of rights to see movies that have an enticing premise like "Middle Men".
Director George Gallo's movie is based on real life incidents of a businessman who joins up with a pair of rambunctious entrepreneurs to make millions from the internet pornography boom of the early 90's.
As the film title discloses, the leading characters here are not pornography filmmakers who post videos/shows on the internet, but rather are the ones who run the billing companies which delivers services in a more anonymous form to its consumers and producers.
Luke Wilson stars as Jack Harris, the aforementioned businessman who lives the "white picket fence" life in Houston with a beautiful wife and two children; but through a series of opportunistic events, he is porn to be alive in millions.
Since the movie's primary theme is the underbelly of the internet porn industry, you could imagine how many testosterone-driven shady characters are in "Middle Men"; including a Russian Mafia mob boss, an unscrupulous lawyer, and a hypocritical governor; just to name a few.
I was taken back by the first hour of "Middle Men" in Director George Gallo's flawless depiction of the era of the internet where successful internet entrepreneurship was booming due to lack of competition, and even a (pardon the expression) jerk-off could make millions with a simplistic idea to make money online.
However, Gallo's second hand I mean second half of "Middle Men" seemed more like an action-fare "Bad Boys" than an authentic portrayal of an internet-based company flourishing & surviving in the next era of the world wide web.
"Middle Men" is a movie that is not for everyone, and those who came to expect another "Boogie Nights" will be disappointed; but those who came for a narrative on those who drove the business of internet porn during its early years, will be mostly satisfied with the service that "Middle Men" provides.
I mention this in part since comparing Scorsese to beer is fun, but also because of the critics who have compared Middle Men, George Gallo's latest, to those films (Boogie Nights also comes up due to the porn connection, but Scorsese, who influenced Gallo to become a director with Mean Streets, is a better one to note for some reasons).
Middle Men is Coors Light.It's the tale of the start of porn on the internet, the knuckleheads who got together and made it happen just by proxy of wanting to get naked women on-line and get paid for it, and the 'normal' guy, the average Joe, who made it happen as a legitimate enterprise.
It so desperately tries, and what Gallo does is take what is a very interesting idea for a story, of the business side of porn on the internet, and only makes it intermittently interesting in the way it's about it.
For example, more than halfway into the film we see the FBI is following Luke Wilson's character, and he gets panicked, until he finds out why they're following him: his porn-star "girlfriend", Audrey Dawns, is a HUGE star with the terrorists overseas, and she becomes an asset to them.
When Luke Wilson is given something good to do in a scene, he can really go with it, and I liked seeing him in a lead role again...
Wilson's Jack Harris keeps talking not in a voice that reveals something about his character or attitude, no, he just keeps going around talking about what will happen or how he feels, simple s*** that would get him nailed to wall, eviscerated, in a freshman screen writing class much less a Hollywood movie.
This movie sort of reminded me of the film "The Social Network" except with porn and not as a polished, sharp and well written script and dialogue.
But on the bright side this film has many elements that young adults like watching in movies.
The plot is based on a true story about the pioneers of internet commerce so that people would pay with their credit card to watch porn on the internet.
The movie has it's entertaining moments but it tries to be something it's not and felt like it's copying other gangster films.
I thought this movie might have potential since it's about something that maybe more interesting to watch than about the social network, but it just isn't crafted all that well.
A Goodfella's for the internet porn generation but here the incessant narration becomes irritating.Jack Harris (Luke Wilson) is a fixer and a family man.
When others want to cap knees, he looks for better non violent solutions.In the late 1990s, Jack goes to LA and comes across two porn crazed but clever drug addicts who are making inroads in paid internet porn.Wayne Beering (Giovanni Ribisi) and Buck Dolby (Gabriel Macht) have brains but bizarrely dumb with it.
Business is a lot like Sex. There are but a few fact-based films that are both funny, intriguing and intense and George Gallo's 'Middle Men' is one of them.
I only came across this movie by chance and hadn't heard of it before which had me wondering why this movie, which had quite a noticeable cast, received little attention while trash like 'Hall Pass' and all those abysmal Jonah Hill and Seth Rogan films get thrown at our faces.I was quite put off when I saw 'Middle Men' being described as 'Goodfellas' meets 'Boogie Nights'.
STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Morning *** Friday Night ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning A fictionalized account of Jack Harris (Luke Wilson), a businessman in the 90s who spots the potential for internet porn and falls in with two loose cannon entrepreneurs (Giovanni Ribisi and Gabriel Macht) launching a pioneer porn site that attracts viewers from around the world.
Always with his neck out for this, Jack gets caught up in a whirlwind of success over the next few years that sees him caught up with a high profile young porn star (Laura Ramsay) and threatens to destroy everything he holds dear.The middle is seen as the best place to be for quite a few people in life.
The "Inspired By True Events" telling how how one man became filthy rich off transactions between distributors and customers of the porn industry, via the internet.
I don't know how true the story is since the man the film is based on is also the producer, I would embellish a few points as well to make my life seem more interesting.
Luke Wilson plays the lead character, a guy who people go to when they need some help with a business problem.
Gabriel Macht and Giovanni Ribisi play two idiots who come up with the brilliant idea of charging people for looking at porn on the internet, apparently one of these guys is the one responsible for writing the code that allows internet companies like Amazon and Ebay, as well as online banks, take your credit card number and bill it.
So Wilson is brought into play to help get the business back on track, he is the one who comes up with the idea to be the middle man.
Of course they can't make all this money and live a happy life, where is the excitement in that?So there happens to be an accidental death, the two guys who came up with the idea get more and more paranoid and accidentally end up involved in a child porn site, Wilson helps the government assassinate terrorists and James Caan shows up as a slimy lawyer...are there any other kind though?
If you're into internet pornography, drugs, crime-films with lots of intrigue and some sex, the this is the movie for you.Otherwise pass it up.Me, couldn't stand the things..
If 'inspired by a true story' is taking one fact and making heaps of shtuff up around it then this review is 'inspired by a true story', in as much as I watched a film called Middle Men a few days ago and felt inspired enough to write about it.True story.Two alcoholic, drug abusing, going nowhere porn-addicts have a moment of clarity and decide the time has come that people OK guys need to pay for their online porn.
For some reason they shelved the film for a while, no idea why but perhaps it was because they realised that it just isn't that good.Oh and as far as the concept of Luke Wilson as a master negotiating business tactician?
Director George Gallo takes this rich material and makes a middling movie..
All the important technicalities add up nicely, including the acting by the three bigger names of Luke Wilson, James Caan and especially Giovanni Ribisi.
The characters are solid, convincing, story is great, gives you a good idea on the inner workings of deals made and ideas created inside the Internet porn industry at it's conception.
It is also pretty entertaining in the way of comedy, drama, nudity, it's got it all, a great compelling story to boot.
This movie was perfect for him to really show his skills as an actor.It's about a family man who's got a gift of getting himself/people out of trouble or rather out of difficult situations.Chronicles Jack Harris, one of the pioneers of internet commerce, as he wrestles with his morals and struggles not to drown in a sea of conmen, mobsters, drug addicts, and porn stars.Well it's highly entertaining and keep's it's pace throughout the movie,in the last 30 minutes things really heat up.So watch it & enjoy.Shab-Bakher (Good Night)..
Luke Wilson is Jack Harris, a level-headed family man who is good at any kind of business enterprise.
In fact, it is his ability in this regard that gets him involved with a couple of real dandies, the epitome of anti-business guys.Giovanni Ribisi as Wayne Beering and Gabriel Macht as Buck Dolby one day just happen upon the idea.
Two genius drug user live together (Giovanni Ribisi plays an excellent paranoid on coke) and can't get any decent porn on the Internet so they decide to create their own web site and invent a program that allows people to pay on line with a credit card.
Luke Wilson plays a businessman and family man whose narration frequents the movie.
Don't get me wrong, Caan played a good part, it was just boring when he was on screen as compared to the action/comedy/drama going on during the rest of the film..
There is also one hilarious sub-plot involving the FBI wanting them to produce "porn" that terrorists like so they can track them more efficiently :)).Apparently the story is loosely based on the experiences of the creators experience in the internet during the 1990s, now if even a small part of this story is true you can understand that why it would have made a fictionalised account.
Well more of an inspiration from a true life person who invented a way of people being able to watch porn on-line.