Charlie Sheen Movie:

Editorial Review:
There's a great film waiting to be made from the real-life Cain and Abel story of the Mitchell brothers, a story of decadence, drugs, and sex that ended in bloody fratricide. This, unfortunately, is not it. The San Francisco pornography pioneers created the crossover X-rated hit Behind the Green Door, took on both the government and the mob, and weathered the crash of porno theaters by turning their show palace into a venue for live sex shows. The brothers Mitchell were flamboyant showman, from black-tie movie premieres to high-profile arrests, and brothers Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez play the media clowns with ease (under, it should be noted, some very unconvincing bald caps).

Sheen brings a mix of boyish charm, sleepy-eyed irresponsibility, and welled-up rage to the part of Artie Mitchell, the younger brother full of ideas always in the shadow of Jim (Estevez), the director and media glory-hound. Behind the scenes, however, their lives are a repetitious loop of snorting, smoking, sex, and shouting matches. The sloppy direction by Estevez is rambling and unfocused, never really plumbing the depths of the love and jealousy that drove the brothers. It pales next to the passion of Boogie Nights and the complexities of The People vs. Larry Flynt, but for all its shortcomings it is a fascinating story, the underside of the outlaw American dream.

The DVD also features commentary by Estevez and Sheen (who cracks so many deadpan jokes he keeps breaking up Emilio) and interviews with Marilyn Chambers and former San Francisco assistant district attorney Bernard Walter, who talk about the real-life Mitchell brothers. --Sean Axmaker

Rated X [Region 2] Reviews:
Porno doco
2009-09-15 - It is a doco of making porno at the dawn of the legalizing a business in Hollywood.

Sometimes funny, sometimes rude, this work is just of doing cinematographic stuff as usual, leaving authors' porno for X-movies.

classic
2009-08-04 - Jim Mitchell's whole life, he has rescured his baby brother, Artie. Artie misbehaves in school around age 12, and Jim runs to save him from a paddling. He tells the princable dad does not beleive in violence.

Artie needs a lot of help, because dad is a vengeful man. He gives Artie the belt. Days after, dad takes both boys on a collection run, with a shot gun.

Jim had the edge over Artie, and in the late 1960s, he is in UCLA film school, learning to make avant-gaurde films. Artie wonders the country, looking for industrial jobs.

Being tight, big brother invites little brother to join his film crew. Alligned with the times, Jim has big, artsy ambitions. Problem is, no money.

To solve this, the Mitchell brothers decide, over a joint, to make skin filcks to finanace the art films. The art films, of course, never materialize. The porn does, and the boys soon find themselves getting arrested.

This is all great fun. This is the era of Lenny Bruce, key parties. Playboy was showing the stuff downstairs. Bill Kunzler was defending Jim Morrison. Oh! Calcutta and Hair were big hits. Mainstreem hits. Hell, Midnight Cowboy just won best picutre with an X.

Artie has an idea: why not make a nudie art film--something that will make money and suit Jims avant gaurde ambitions. Behind The Green Door was born, and Artie was directing. But Artie does not know his lence from his wine bottle, so Jim has to start from scratch.

Dispite another arrest in trial, Green Door his a smash, and soon, that's millionaire Mitchel to you. Both Mitchels marry their sweathearts and start work on an even bigger project: a porn bible epic.

Trouble is, the 60s joints have become 70s cocaine. Every day. With morning eggs bacon OJ and coffee. With the white powder magic, any idea you have is brillant: opening a pepsi, eating mounds of food, or spending millions on a Cecil B. Damille skinfest.

Sodom and Gamhora bombs. But the brothers still have their mansions, theatre, prodcution company, and drugs. By now, the 70s is turning to the 80s, both guys are too strung out to make films. The 60s art venue becomes the 80s strip joint.

Jim can handle coke, and eventually, quits, with no help. Artie can't, and he gets incresingly viloent. He takes up his father's love for guns, and beats his wife when she shakes hands with her tennis teacher. He also has the bright idea to drag his kids deep into the ocean on a platic raft, and almost kills them. Guess who saves the three.

Artie tries to stop with Jims loving help, but can't. He is GONE! He walks , a beast in a death fog: rants and raves, points his guns at family, frineds, anyone who impeedes his own destruction. Soon, he gets the idea that Jim his a worse addict than he is--Jim still smokes Morlboros. He calls his ex, his mom, and Jim, ranting that Jim must die.

Jim walks into Arties house, shooting and killing Artie.

The Sheen brothers are perfect at capturing the dynamics at work. Artie resents Jim's help and compadence, and Jim can't help but making a life of saving Artie. They are so emeshed, it is any wonder one killed the other?

The period set design is spectacular: 60s and 70s interiors are exactly what I remember houses looking like when I was tiny. There is hot orange in 1968 and cool blue in 1974. There are no larva lamps or stereotypical devices to hammer you that this is the time period. Everything is organic: you are THERE.

Emelio Evestazes directed this. He uses artsey tricks, but keeps them to a minimum, and only uses them when they fit: a shaking camera at the end to convey Artie's coke-induced mental break. They work well. He has a feel for time, people and place, and nails it.

I wonder why Martin did not play dad. Too busy being president?

Yes, it's rated X (or should be)
2007-05-08 - Emilio Estavez directed this, but one wonders why. It doesn't take a genius to realize that a movie about two porn movie directors is not going to win any Academy Awards. What was Emilio thinking? You can play it as tragedy. You certainly can't make heroes of these guys. I guess what he was thinking was this was a part of America from the sixties to the nineties in the twentieth century--this was the reality and let's tell the truth. But somebody else might say, why bother?

Most critics and viewers would call this a prize turkey, but...but is there some redeeming social value? Charlie Sheen and Estavez star as the brothers Mitchell, two entrepreneurial guys who stumble from the free love scene of the sixties in San Francisco to the cash cow of the first widely distributed porn movies, including the infamous "Behind the Green Door." Maybe there is a kind of free speech angle here, with the porno boys fighting the good fight against censorship and Big Brother. On the other hand, there is a didactic tale here about how success corrupts and how sex, drugs and rock and roll--forget the rock and roll; this is almost pure sex and drugs--how sex and drugs may lead you to make a movie called "Sodom and Gomorrah" which may suggest that you ought to be starring it in.

Charlie Sheen is very good and so is Estavez. His direction is also not bad. The movie moves right along and the degeneration of the brothers is well expressed. Megan Ward had a chance in a supporting role here, but she failed miserably, possibly because how could she feel any connection with a role that made her the quasi-tolerant, quasi-suffering wife of a man who makes his living pandering to lust (and indulging his own) while smoking, drinking and snorting anything he can get his hands on?

Not pretty. However, I wouldn't be surprised if someday in the distant future, long after I am gone, in some social science class at say Cal Berkeley this movie is played as augmenting an anthropological study of a certain segment of our population in the later part of the 20th century. The students can see this as a film documenting the moral corruption of a nation following Vietnam and the Nixon administration, perhaps even anticipating the moral corruption we see today.

But I would advise you to skip this unless you are a big Emilio Estavez fan, in which case this is a must see, or if you are a Charlie Sheen fan, and then it is worth seeing because this is one of his better performances--and it's amusing to see these guys in their bald domes and their side burns and authentic seventies attire. To be honest, I've seen people win Academy Awards who weren't half as good as Sheen was. Naturally this won nothing.

Band of brothers.....
2005-10-06 - Real life mainstream actors/brothers Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen take on the amusing and twisted underground characters/brothers of Artie and Jim Mitchell in "RATED X".

Artie and Jim Mitchell were at the forefront of the San Francisco porn revolution in the early 70's. The owned their owned theater, made their own X rated films- and lived a life of abundant excess.

When they created/produced/wrote and directed "Behind the Green Door", they found themselves thrust in the spotlight - and made millions. Unfortunately, their success sufferd a serious backlash- and while some were able to pick up and recover - others only found themselves thrust deeper into a life a drugs, despair, and eventually murder.

The movie takes an unflinching look at a classic time in American Hostory, and the story of the Mitchell Brothers is quite amusing and saddening at the same time.

Great direction by Emilio Estevez and some fine acting by both actors (especially Sheen in the final half of the film) make this an entertaing "diamond in the rough".

Recommended!

Entertaining DVD nicely sums up an era
2005-07-05 - This is another example of a product delivering a pretty good movie but a very good DVD. "Rated X" is watchable and engaging, but ultimately doesn't add anything new to the often-seen story of would-be movie moguls finally making it big but then being brought down by the excesses of the high life (in this case, cocaine). Of course, if that's what really happened to the Mitchell Brothers, I guess viewers can't complain much about seeing it all before. In any event, what puts this DVD over the top are the bonus materials: we get several generous interview segments with the Mitchell Brothers' famous discovery, Marilyn Chambers, who elaborates on the action in the movie (no pun intended), and equally generous interview segments with an assistant district attorney integrally involved with all the legal troubles the Mitchell Brothers had in their 1970's heyday. Between the movie and extras, one gets a comprehensive and satisfyingly entertaining snapshot of the characters in question and the overall mood of the era.