Middle Men
Paramount Vantage | Release Date: August 6, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
60
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
11
Mixed:
9
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Think "Boogie Nights" meets "Casino," though it's not likely to make the lasting impression of either seminal film. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
Luke Wilson, who has appeared in a long run of bad movies, seizes on his juiciest role since "The Royal Tenenbaums" here. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Ribisi and Macht are sleaze incarnate. James Caan, as a conniving lawyer, and Rade Sherbedgia, as a Russian crime boss, are even more cootified. Best of all is Wilson, digging into his juiciest role in years and putting a human face on this mesmerizing morality tale, a journey into the toxic heart of the American dream. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
Decidedly stimulating in its own right, at least in the early going. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Originally intended as a cable television series, Middle Men bears some telltale scars of hasty, clumsy truncation. Still, there is a raffish vigor that makes the movie watchable despite all-over-the-map storytelling and a fuzzy, superficial grasp of the salient themes. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'Hehir
Even as this film unravels into incoherent, self-justifying moral instruction, it never becomes boring to watch. Read full review
70
VarietyTodd McCarthy
"Boogie Nights" meets "Goodfellas" in Middle Men, a relentlessly sleazy but undeniably intriguing tour of the bottom-feeding netherworld where porn and organized crime do their mutual bump-and-grind. Read full review
70
Village VoiceRobert Wilonsky
But for all that predictability, Middle Men is smart and tense, with each scene drenched in dread. Read full review
67
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
Is Jack, who is patterned on a real-life character, sociopathic or just plain clueless? Gallo doesn't seem to care. He cares about parading before us lowlifes living the high life. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
Zealously nasty fun which, surprisingly, ends on something of a note of upbeat grace and familial redemption, Middle Men is more entertaining than 99% of 37% of the Internet. Read full review
65
MovielineMichelle Orange
Wilson's unflappable, deeply sympathetic affect and aging golden-boy visage have a very Jack-like smoothing effect on the story's rough patches. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazinePam Grady
Luke Wilson's terrific performance renders an uneasy hybrid of crime drama, comedy and ecommerce far more compelling than it otherwise would be. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
This cranked-up drama wants it both ways. Read full review
58
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
What could have been a complex portrait of a flawed man dealing with the perils of success ends up far less interesting. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Who would have believed a film with this much skin and reckless, life-threatening excess could end up a rather dull muddle? Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Sober and dispiriting, tense and morose. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
With Mallick as one of the producers, this Boogie Nights wannabe benefits from an insider's knowledge of how online commerce was born but suffers from a seemingly endless voice-over by the Wilson/Mallick character steering our sympathies in his direction (it's the sort of middle man the movie could have done without). Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
Director George Gallo seems so enamored of Martin Scorsese's Mafia classic, he's borrowed everything from the use of voiceover to the Stones-centric soundtrack to the insistent editing style. What's missing, alas, is the artistry. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
Like Ribisi and Macht's miniature porn empire, Gallo's mildly diverting but overstuffed, underdeveloped opus could use the cinematic equivalent of a fix-it man like Wilson's character to transform its frenetic jumble of subplots and sleazy characters into a cohesive, satisfying whole. Read full review
40
Time OutKeith Uhlich
This highly fictionalized look at the Wild West early days of Internet porn is off-putting in almost every way, with sledgehammer stylistic flourishes (incessant shaky-cam; a Rolling Stones musical cue as ironic comment) and dialogue that sounds like it was written in a testosterone-fueled haze. Read full review
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