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Martin Sheen progeny Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen -- the original cinematic Men at Work -- reunite in front of and behind the camera for Rated X, an appropriately sordid true-life tale of another pair of cinematic brothers, Jim and Artie Mitchell, the San Francisco porn kings whose empire was destroyed by narcotics. There is genuine fraternal energy between Estevez and Sheen driving the film, which seems at times like a Boogie Nights knockoff/homage. (Indeed, entire shots from director Paul Thomas Anderson's film are repeated almost verbatim here). A film student in San Francisco in the late '60s, Jim Mitchell (Estevez) witnesses the local tableau of drug-induced sexual liberation, and decides to turn a profit by filming this hippie titillation. With his younger brother Artie (Sheen) in tow as business partner, the Mitchells buy a theater and establish themselves as Northern California's kings of smut, capping their rise with Behind the Green Door, a nearly silent film that made Marilyn Chambers a star. Their downfall begins with the production of a hilarious, hallucinogenic, unintelligible pornographic rendering of Sodom and Gomorrah (involving UFOs) and catalyzes with Artie's nonstop cocaine snorting, which leaves him distraught and paranoid. Brotherly bonds shine through the debauchery, with Estevez showing surprising restraint in his performance and Sheen -- a self-proclaimed wild man -- giving his blow-based tantrums a shocking, method-like quality.

All Movie Guide

Having created an empire on girly shows and skin flicks, Jim Mitchell and Artie Mitchell achieved mainstream success with Behind the Green Door (1972), one of only a handful of hardcore porn movies to do so. Brothers Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen star in the film about the life and troubled times of porn's dynamic duo. Opening with the 1991 fratricidal murder of Artie (Sheen) at the hands of Jim (Estevez, who also directs), the film flashes back to their father lecturing them on the importance of family. In 1967, while studying film at San Francisco State, Jim's professor (Peter Bogdanovich) upbraids him for including numerous leering shots of half-naked women in his student works. Soon Jim along with his brother, fresh out of the Army, starts a smut studio in an old warehouse. Their business takes off, and in no time they are being harassed by the police for obscenity. Along the way, the two hire former Ivory Snow model Marilyn Chambers, get married, and snort half of the cocaine in Bolivia. After the fleeting success of Green Door, their lives spiral into a drug-addled hell. Jim eventually bottoms out, but Artie, wracked by a profound inferiority complex, slides into cocaine dementia and begins to threaten Jim's family. Things eventually boil over, culminating in that bloody night in 1991. This film was screened at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. Jonathan Crow

Product Details

• UPC: 758445103120
• Source: SHOWTIME ENT.
• Region Code: 1
• Sound: Dolby Surround
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English
• Time: 1:55:00
• Sales Rank: 35,391

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