Jack Harris (Luke Wilson) has a talent for fixing problems. Whether he’s keeping loan sharks from busting your kneecaps or taking a Los Angeles nightclub from also-ran to the hottest spot in town this down-home Midwesterner with a loving wife, Diana (Jacinda Barrett), and two adorable kids is definitely the type of guy he gets every job done.

Luke Wilson (center) in Middle Men © Paramount Pictures

Even the ones he knows he should walk away from. But when disreputable lawyer Jerry Haggerty (James Caan) tells him a tale about two L.A. yokels, Wayne Beering (Giovanni Ribisi) and Buck Dolby (Gabriel Macht), who inadvertently invented a way to make hundreds of millions of dollars on this newfangled thing called the internet he is understandably curious.

Although Wayne and Buck are in cahoots with notorious Russian mobster Nikita Sokoloff (Rade Serbedzija), and even though the heart of their idea requires working with the adult porn industry, Jack goes against his best instincts and decides to see if he can make the business work. Fast forward a few years and he’s the head of a gigantic corporation, and although his family life is falling apart he’s so lost in the whirlwind lifestyle of a multimillionaire executive he hardly notices just how bad things have become.  

George Gallo’s (Trapped in Paradise) new film Middle Men is the kind of motion picture that makes me pull my hair out in frustration. Loosely based on fact, it follows the story of the men involved with bringing porn to the internet and the complications, oddities and outright weirdness that was spawned from their doing it. As such, there is inherent drama to this tale that could definitely be explored, the ups, downs and inside outs of doing something so obscenely profitable a rich place indeed to base a narrative.

But Gallow and fellow screenwriter Andy Weiss seem to have no idea as to the best way to tell their story. The get lost in all the intricate strands and multiple characters, losing control of the situation almost as completely as Wayne and Buck do with their own lives. The end up having to resort to having Jack spell things out with an almost continuous voiceover, and whether the plot moves backwards or forwards he’s the single constant making sure viewers never get the opportunity to lose their bearings.

Problem is that by doing this all the drama is slowly stripped away to virtual nonexistence to the point the entire film ends up becoming trite and pointless. There is no suspense, no mystery, and although the outcome for him and his family is supposed to always be in doubt the truth of the matter I didn’t feel like it really was not for a single solitary instant. Gallow and Weiss foreshadow everything, shooting themselves in the foot time and time again, and by the time things came to a head I was so darn bored I could have cared less whether or not if Jack made it out of a certain Las Vegas hotel room in one piece.

But the reason I was frustrated is because Middle Men has potential. Lots and lots of it in fact. Certain scenes are extraordinary, little moments here and there hinting at just the type of film this could have been had the writers come at if from a little different of an angle. There are also some simply divine character moments for actors like Kevin Pollack, Robert Forester, John Ashton and Kelsey Grammer, while Wilson reminded me once again why I used to think so highly of him and thought once upon a time he had more talent in front of the camera than his brother Owen.

The simple truth is that this could have been, probably should have been, a really good movie. The story is interesting, the actors are just about perfect for their parts (although it must be said that Ribisi goes way over the top while casting Caan as slick, mobster-like lawyer is a tad obvious) and a lot of the dialogue is deliciously profane. If al I saw were certain bit here and other pieces there I’d probably not complain because in small portions a lot of this is perfectly fine. It’s the whole where the problem lies, and as much as I kept hoping everything would ultimately come together the sad reality is annoyingly anything but.

In fact, the longer things went on the more I began to wish the movie would just put me out of my misery and end. Gallo’s pacing isn’t slow, it’s glacial, and like a coming ice age things start to freeze so solidly the only thing hot was my desire to leave the theatre. By the time the climax rolled around I’d already begun to checkout, and even though Wilson does his best to make it all work I was just too beaten up, belittled and abused to care if the tricks he had up his sleeve were worth the pummeling to get to them.

Gallo wrote one of my all-time favorite buddy pictures, 1988’s Midnight Run directed by Martin Brest and starring Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin. That movie had zip. That movie had pizzazz. That movie had energy. That movie had heart. That movie had something to say.  

Middle Men, on the other hand, ultimately has nothing to say and even less to offer. It takes its true story of ingenuity and idiocy and makes it boring and pointless. The filmmaker beats his audience over the head, spelling things out in such a blasé manner even those excited at the prospect of seeing naked women wriggle across the screen are going to come out afterwards feeling looked down upon and slightly abused. This movie is sadly a waste, any potential it might have had left panting at the door like an insane geriatric dog miraculously still in heat.

Film Rating: ê1/2 (out of 4) 

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