The Movie
One of the great things that a well-researched movie can do is enlighten us on some intriguing but little-known bit of insider information from the world around us. Middle Men does exactly that. As the story unfolds, we meet an affable husband and father (Luke Wilson) who falls in with some pioneering internet porn purveyors, and he winds up being one of the architects of the modern online adult entertainment industry.
The secret--and this is just between us--is that once they proved the voracious demand for the product, they stopped supplying the content and transitioned into providing discrete third-party billing services for any pornographer, anywhere. Hundreds of millions of dollars ensue.
The movie has been heavily fictionalized but is based loosely on actual events and people. When this much money and this much vice are involved, it all eventually gets messy, complicated (perhaps a bit too complicated?) and downright nasty. Trouble is, once you've seen Boogie Nights, much of the "hidden" world of pornography has already been revealed. And when you want a riveting tale about runaway internet success, you're not going to come close to The Social Network anytime soon. But some terrific performances and a couple of moderately clever twists help Middle Men rise above fair-to-middlin' status.
The Picture
Framed at 2.40:1, Middle Men boasts strong colors and exceptionally crisp detail, almost a "warts-and-all" look that helps to ground an often-glamorized industry in a stark reality, putting a human face on the heavily augmented and made-up lovelies, and the largely unattractive, sometimes violent men behind them. Beyond that, the image quality is only so-so, as smoke and haze can lead to video noise. I also noted some strobing in fast motion and buzz on Luke Wilson's fine-check jacket, along with some unpleasantly compressed backgrounds.
The Sound
The rear channels in this DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix are used predominately to add a bit of flavor to the proceedings, as genuinely discrete effects are few and far between. Maybe there's the echo of a gunshot, a tame thunderstorm filling out the soundfield, a random car horn or some whooshing to convey a sense of excitement. Music is consistently mixed in 5.1 however, be it a song playing within the scene or one playing over the scene, added to suggest mood. Dialogue is generally fine, but I did need to engage the subtitles once or twice.
The Extras
Director George Gallo leads the audio commentary, joined by his editor Malcolm Campbell and cinematographer Lukas Ettlin. We are also given three deleted scenes totaling about six minutes with the bridging footage to help us figure out where they would have appeared in the film. There are also about two minutes of bloopers and a one-minute "Slap Montage" wherein a recurring motif of the movie is set to music. All of the video extras are in standard definition.
Final Thoughts
Interesting but not fascinating, and never quite as funny as it thinks it is, Middle Men is nonetheless an entertaining chapter in the history of internet porn. If the topic--and a bevy of naked "actresses"--appeals to you, I recommend a rental, on Blu-ray of course: Watching video online is so last-century.
Product Details
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