Rated X Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES
They put the "X" in Sex.
The True story of the Mitchell Brothers: America's Original Porn Kings.
They turned us all on... then they turned on each other.
Based on the true story of Jim and Artie Mitchell, two brothers who entered the porn industry in the early 60's. After creating such legendary porn films as "Behind the Green Door" and "Inside Marily Chambers", they later became addicted to drugs and began a downward spiral leading to bankruptcy and murder.
| Charlie Sheen | Artie Mitchell |
| Emilio Estevez | Jim Mitchell |
| Geoffrey Blake | Michael Kennedy |
| Rafer Weigel | Lionel |
| Tracy Hutson | Marilyn Chambers |
| Megan Ward | Meredith |
| Terry O'Quinn | J.R. Mitchell |
| Danielle Brett | Adrienne |
| Nicole de Boer | Karen Mitchell |
| Deborah Grover | Georgia Mae |
| Dylan McFadyen | Young Jim |
| Taylor Estevez | Teenage Jim |
| Eric Cabral | Young Artie |
| Robert Clark | Teenage Artie |
| Loretta Jafelice | First Grade Teacher |
| Emilio Estevez |
5.70 out of 10 (1572 votes)
Visitor Reviews
Just about watchable
posted on 11 Jun 2009A constant barrage of cocaine, drinking & sex may have made it realistic but didn't make it interesting. I also hope it weren't meant as a turn on, as it failed miserably there. A film about porn but without the slightest inkling of any porn in it at all. Even allowing for the time scale there were still chunks of story missing like wives departing not to be seen or mentioned again. But Emilio Estevez was good & it was just fractionally better than Boogie Nights as it had some sort of story & character. Just not much. A low 4/10.
Band of Brothers........
posted on 09 Jun 2009Real 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 suffered a serious backlash- and while somewere 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.A great directorial debut for Emilio Estevez and some fine acting by both actors (especially Sheen in the final half of the film) make this an entertaining "diamond in the rough".Recommended!
Bad!
posted on 15 Nov 2008Despite the real interesting story which I advice to read from the book (this movie doesn't make a good portrait of it) the direction of the film was horrible. Was necessary to move around the camera so much? Like the worst MTV video. Just because there wasn't much of happening the director thought that is the way to entertain an audience. Don't think so. Often the movie was incredible boring. The acting, specially regarding Sheen, was terrible. I don't reccomend this movie. Choose instead "Boogie Night", which has a very good professional direction and better, much better acting. I wonder if someone could get a compensation for have bought the film on DVD (that's me!)
Rated Crap! But you could have guessed that yourself...
posted on 14 Jan 2008Come on! This movie was directed by Emilio Estevez people, and co-stars him and his brother Charlie Sheen. So if you are expecting something as impressive and accomplished as 'Boogie Nights' you are obviously insane! Estevez previously directed two of the worst movies ever made 'Wisdom' and 'Men At Work', and he isn't getting any better. Martin Scorsese he ain't! And Estevez and Sheen between them have appeared in many of the lamest turkeys of the last twenty years. Add 'Rated X' to that list.The story of the rise and fall of the Mitchell brothers, who were partly responsible for legitimizing porn in the 1970s with 'Behind The Green Door', could have been made into a fascinating movie if it was written, acted and directed by somebody of greater ability. Which, let's face it, is just about anybody. Estevez and co go absolutely nowhere with this potentially interesting material. The brothers relationship is simplified so much, and their odd relationship with their father is never fully explored, so we never truly understand what motivates them, or end up caring about their fates.The only thing you'll get from this movie are some cheap laughs from Sheen flipping out and hamming it up outrageously. Going by his laughably bad performance in this, and a similar nutty one in 'Bad Day On The Block', he seems to be attempting to usurp Dennis Hopper's crown as the King of Screen Psychos. After his amusing self-parodic role in 'Being John Malkovich' it's difficult to say just how self conscious this is, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. All I can say is that Charlie cracks me up! He's a real card.
Stick with Boogie Nights instead.
posted on 26 Jul 2007Story of the Mitchell Brothers who started the porn revelation in the late 60's, but as they gained fame and started making big money, their lives started to fall apart.What starts off as an interesting film, eventually runs out of steam. Characters are introduced and then suddenly disappear. The script is uneven at best, and as hard as Sheen and Estevez try, they just don't seem to fit their roles. Tracy Huston is very good and well casted as porn legend Marylin Chambers. MY RATING: 5 out of 10.
Decent
posted on 20 Jun 2007Rated X (2000) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Filmmakers Artie and Jim Mitchell (Charlie Sheen/Emilio Estevez) find fame with Behind the Green Door, one of the few porn titles to hit the mainstream. The first half dealing with the porn business in the early 70's is very interesting but sadly the second half of the film goes downhill as we see the two men fall from grace. Estevez directs very nicely but we've seen this countless times and nothing new is really done here. Sheen gives the performance of his career and Estevez the actor does a nice job as well.
Yes, it's rated X
posted on 05 May 2007Emilio 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, that 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 you've got 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.
Some good work, some not so good
posted on 13 Apr 2007CONTAINS SPOILER: Not really a bad film, better than I had expected it to be. Sheen and Estevez are accomplished actors, and that shows here. The women in the cast were very good, also, Tracy Hutson, Megan Ward, Danielle Brett, and Nicole de Boer. I've had to spend some time in San Francisco on business the last 15 years or so, so I was aware of the ads for the O'Farrell Theatre, and, I think there is another Mitchell Brothers theatre or club or something there in the Tenderloin. I was also aware that one of the brothers had killed the other, but didn't remember which one. Oh, well, back to the film. Estevez succumbed to the temptation to use far too many distracting director techniques, and that detracted from the film. And the bald pates on the brothers looked way fake. I don't know if they wore wigs or shaved their heads, but the bald areas were too sharply delineated from the hair. Overall, the film is worth watching when it comes on cable.
Emilio and Charlie are back
posted on 25 Jan 2007I recently rented this movie and I must say I thought it was pretty darn good. Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen give solid performances as the Mitchell brothers. Now this movie is not as good as Boogie Nights or The People vs. Larry Flynt, but it is still a solid film. The cinematography is brilliant and Charlie Sheen is superb as the younger of the brothers. I highly recommend you check this one out.
Interesting behind-the-scenes look at porn industry
posted on 23 Jun 2006Although this film has an off-putting title, people may actually be quite surprised at the content. Yes, it is about the porn industry, but has other subjects and deeper meanings. The Mitchell brothers (Sheen and Estevez) are in business together as San Francisco's porn kings. Controversy follows as the general public do not approve of them. Apart from the frequent sex scenes at the beginning of the movie, this film escalates into a deeper subject of family feuds. You find that you don't particularly like the characters, but are still interested in what happens to them. It is a rather sad ending. The film, in it's directorial aspect, is very well done.Although not the best film Estevez has directed, I was glad to have seen it.
Rated X.....had it's moments
posted on 31 Jan 2005Maybe I'm rating this movie a little bit higher than I should. But there were some good moments for me in this film. I have no problem with Charlie Sheen or Emilio Estevez, they have both done some good stuff in their careers (and a few good movies too). Not to mention Denise Richards! Anyway, I just wonder if Tracy Hutson regrets playing Marylin Chambers in this film and doing a nude/sex scene. Seeing as how she is now on the squeaky clean ABC show "Extreme Home Makeovers". She is incredibly hot and I love to see her on the Home Makeover show, especially when I happened to remember that she was naked in "Rated X". I think this film is entertaining. Of course it is not even in the same league as "Boogie Nights", not even close...but if you are a porno movie fan, you might enjoy this story of a couple of the pioneers of the genre. If nothing else you will enjoy Tracy Hutson's awesome body. Which we may never seen in a film again. Too bad.
Could have been better
posted on 20 Nov 2004This movie had potential. Maybe not as much potential as Boogie Nights, but potential nonetheless. What really killed this movie for me was the fact that Emilio Estevez tried WAY to hard to be some kind of avant garde director, with fancy angles and cut shots throughout the entire picture. It did nothing more than make me nauseaus.As far as acting, Estevez and Sheen did a fairly decent job of portraying the Mitchell Brothers, however, in the end, the movie doesn't work mainly because they simply just touched on a few of the major events and focused instead on the drugs, which wasn't even very interesting in the first place.There was a reason this movie was on Showtime and not released in major theatres.
Rated B+
posted on 21 Oct 2004We have waited a long time to see Charlie Sheen shot in a movie. Unfortunately, it's the wrong one as his performance is an entertaining whirling dervish of energy, ticks and effluvium. He lets it all hang out and we're laughing too much to question as to whether he should tuck it in. Emilio has always been an underrated and efficacious director and although he has never quite managed to find an authentic style of his own, he knows how to effect your emotions. The denouement is different to the one we are expecting and it's justification ambiguous. The repeatitive vulgarity of these American morality tales is becoming wearisome but Rated X leaves us unsure as to whether there is a lesson to be drawn from this family tragedy. As many sedate people in straighter professions have succumbed to drink and drugs so why certain people are more susceptible to addictive patterns of behaviour may lie outside the cultural and capitalist influences of the times.
Pleasant surprise!
posted on 17 Sep 2004I caught this movie on a movie channel not knowing what it was, never even heard about it or the Mitchell brothers. And to tell you the truth I didn't expect very much of it. I have always considered Charlie Sheen to be a quite bad actor and can you name one single movie Emilio Estevez has made since young guns? But to my pleasant surprise the movie turned out to be pretty good. Ok it was a bit slow sometimes, but overall it's a quite interesting story about 2 brothers rise and fall. To bad that both of them lost it and messed everything up, but hey, you can't change a story that is based on a true story, right? I give this movie 3 points out of 5 possible. These brothers life caught my attention I will definitely read the book now.
An interesting enough story - only poorly written, directed and acted.
posted on 11 Sep 2004The history of pornography is no more interesting or more apt a subject for cinema as singing nuns, one man's fight against the Nazis or even gladiators fighting for their liberty. Here we have one of life's small true story made even smaller by being produced by bumbling amateurs (the first film about bumbling amateurs - the Mitchell Brothers couldn't light a fire - made by bumbling amateurs?) who have nothing much to say other than "aren't porn people a queer bunch." (Show biz is queer enough as it is - so you can imagine how queer the pimples on its backside are!)True, the story of Behind the Green door and ill-fated Mitchell brothers is an interesting enough counterculture tale, but it can be told almost completely in a couple of paragraphs to the generally interested, and in maybe a page to the X-rated fan. This film knows it has two plums to pull out of the cake and one will do for a grand climax - but what falls in-between is plain boring and meaningless.(Wives of porn directors like the money but don't like the business that money comes from do they - who would have thought?) What on earth prompted Emilio Estevez to think that he should make this in to two hours? But let us forgive him a bit because he is a beginner and they often fall in love with their own work.Boogie Nights (clearly the inspiration for this film being made) wasn't a great film - but it was very good and contained lots of ideas. This has no zest or drive and next to no ideas. They should show the two together in a double bill - to show how bad Boogie Nights could have been in the wrong hands.Take away the sex part of the film and you have a script could have been written by the Dukes of Hazzard script writer on an off day. Rated X is neither sexy nor interesting - nor even a good time passer. Most actors on the screen look bored throughout and you will probably be as well.
very good!
posted on 19 Jan 2004I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised when I watched this movie. Emilio Estevez has produced a movie that is both interesting and visually creative. I liked the cinematography...different and totally appropriate for this movie. And, Charlie did a truly fantastic job as Artie Mitchell! Especially as he moves further into the world of drugs and alcohol addition. I was really amazed at Charlie's acting ability on this one. Emilio was also very good in his role as Jim Mitchell. Charlie and Emilio...you've produced a fantastic film! Very impressive!
America's Fascination with Its Sub-Culture
posted on 15 Oct 2003This is one of the many films in the series that materializes America's fascination with its own sub-culture - violence, drugs, pornography - all coming closer to mainstream in the complex American landscape of the 70's and 80's. It's well done and acted, and I liked it. The true story of the Mitchell brothers, pioneers of porn and live nude shows in San Francisco is told in a linear manner, without too many stuff like 'free speech' justification, as in 'Larry Flint'. The Mitchell guys consider their business just a business, and are not concerned at any point with its human or moral implications. The relationship between the brothers is the central theme, and it is well rendered by the two main actors - Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez (who is also directing). Some more logic in the script would have made a memorable movie. Some of the familiar relations, or the Mafia involvement seem to be just lost in the action. It is however a good film, and I am amazed by the negative comments of other viewers in IMDb, and by the lack of more critical feedback. Maybe the theme is still hard to digest for the American critics, I do not know. An 8/10 on my scale.
Very Underrated!!
posted on 01 Jun 2003This film is/was every bit as good as Blow and Boogie Nights(better than Boogie Nights). How this did not get a distributor and had to be shown on Showtime I'll never know. For what ever reason the brother's Estevez were dealt a disservice. This should have been seen on the big screen. I'm sure I will find out but there has to be something behind the scenes as to why this did not get a distributor. The movie was good and the reason it did not get put out was just wrong.
Story of the Porn Revolutionists
posted on 26 May 2003Going into the theatre, I had mixed expectations. This is, after all, a movie about the porn industry. It could be very graphic, shallow, poorly lit. It most certainly would have a nauseating soundtrack. The tickets were free and it was the premiere event, so the food would be good-- and I went. I was thoroughly amazed to see a very creatively produced film, whose formal perks were as interesting as its content. I was entertained by and sympathetic toward the characters, who were multi-dimensional and intense. Mostly, I was impressed by the film's visual aesthetics-- I'm not referring to the sex scenes here, though there was ample representation of that action-- I'm talking about the piecing together of a beautifully shot film. But besides that, the soundtrack was refreshingly hip and the actors gave excellent performances. This is a Showtime feature that has exceeded its medium's limitations,producing a movie that is given more justice in the theatres than where it will deign to be exhibited- on TV.
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You've seen behind this green door before, and better
posted on 21 Jul 2009On paper this looks like a good idea - a film about the pioneer pornographic film-making brothers Jim and Artie Mitchell, starring film-star brothers Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez. There might well have been a great film made out of the story, but the finished product simply lacks a governing intelligence with anything dramatically exciting or insightful to say about the tale.Estevez directs from a script to which three writers are credited. The piece takes a very formulaic television bio-movie approach to its subject matter. We begin at the end, with Artie threatening to kill Jim, then zap back to their boyhood and then forwards in chronological order through their establishing themselves in the adult movie business, battling for their 5th amendment right to make and exhibit their films, hit big time with the feature Behind the Green Door, stand up to the mob, get over-ambitious in their film-making and fall to pieces through drinks, drugs and broken relationships. Jim manages to pull himself together but Artie goes off the rails, and ironically Jim ends up shooting his errant brother dead.There's an attempt to show that the brothers learned the value of sorting out problems with a gun early on, although this is never linked to the wider gun culture in American (an approach which might have been intriguing). The final scenes are emotionally affecting but too much of the film plods by and left this viewer with a feeling that both the milieu had been better portrayed and the techniques better utilized elsewhere. The film lacks the epic feel of a descent into the pit which makes Boogie Nights so powerful; the flashy cutting, integration of music and showy set pieces all feel a bit second-hand - Scorsese, MTV, even Spielberg circa Jaws are referenced but apart from an impressive tracking shot following one of the wives from one brother in the swimming pool to another sniffing coke upstairs, nothing ever flies out of the screen - it remains steadfastly movie-of-the-week stuff.The problem is perhaps ultimately in the subject matter: porn films have such a visceral effect with their meat shots and money shots that unless we are actually going to go there and see those things, it is very difficult to convey the intensity of the environment in a non-porn drama. Boogie Nights managed it through the quality and originality of the writing, acting and film-making; everything in Rated X is perfectly respectable (perhaps that is part of the issue?), but nothing really powerful or astonishing occurs. Nothing more is to be gained from the film than reading the short wikipedia entry on the Mitchell Brothers, and imagining better films like Boogie Nights and The People Vs Larry Flint.