Middle Men

Luke Wilson is probably lesser know that his brother Owen but he has definitely done some great work in the past and once again he does it here. In this film he plays basically a fixer. When people have a problem he fixes it. Sometimes he's dealing with a little different group of people, say maybe a criminal element. Meanwhile we have these two idiots (well kind of anyways) named Buck Dolby (Gabriel Macht), a former rocket scientist who just moved out to L.A. with his best friend, Wayne Beering (Giovanni Ribisi, here in crazy-paranoid mode), a guy who doesn't have a job and really is not trying too hard to get one. One night, Wayne is looking at porn on the computer (it's the late 80's-early 90's) and is bored by it. He says they could put some pictures up and charge people to look at them. Buck says there's no program for this and keeps repeating this while Wayne keeps telling him his suggestion. All of a sudden Buck tells Wayne to shut up and he goes to his computer and writes code for a billing system that supposedly now all the big corporations use to bill people with. It's not too long when they're making more money than they know what to do with. That's when Jack Harris (Luke Wilson) comes in. He is told by Jerry Haggarty (James Caan) about these two men and comes up with a plan to organize their company. Of course other things have happened that Jack will soon learn about and that's when Jack starts his journey as a "middle man". Superbly written and great acting from all involved especially Wilson, Ribisi, Macht and Rade Sherbedgia (a russian mobster). Laura Ramsey (The Ruins, Venom, Shrink) plays porn star Audrey Dawns, a woman who gets caught up helping, of all people, an fbi operative (Kevin Pollak). I kind of figured this was going to be a good film but was pleasantly surprised by how good. It had an epic feel to it which is hard to explain. The story spread out many years and was always captivating especially with Jack's narration many times. I was torn between 31/2 and 4 stars but went with 3 1/2. Maybe it's a four star movie, we shall see. Needless to say, it is definitely worth your time. Recommended!