In 1991 San Francisco, a disturbed Jim Mitchell (Emilio Estevez) is sitting alone in the dark. In 1960, Artie and his protective older brother Jim are brought up by their hard father (Terry O'Quinn). In 67, film student Jim is filming a political protest but he's more taken with a naked hippie chick. He starts filming porno bringing in younger brother Artie (Charlie Sheen) who marries Meredith (Megan Ward). They are porno pioneers and make the ground-breaking Behind the Green Door starring newbie Marilyn Chambers. Drug addiction slowly drives Artie crazy.There may be a compelling story about these real life pioneers. I am not happy with the directing from Estevez. The movie looks ugly and cheap. Maybe he doesn't have the budget but there is no imagination in this at all. It's distracting how bad it looks. The characters are ugly which doesn't help one bit. It's night and day when compared to a great movie like "Boogie Nights". I'm sure Showtime was intrigued by the lurid subject matter but the quality is simply not there.

On 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.

This movie is a representation of James Mitchell's Justification for for first degree murder of Artie Mitchell. Artie was not murdered because he had a drug problem. Artie was murdered as a power move for his brother to take control of all the brothers finances. This movie was awful because it helped a murderer look good while depicting the deceased as a wild crazed lunatic. Personal I feel Artie Mitchell's character better resembled a mixture between James and Karen's personalities. This movie seemed to be an accurate representation of the utter chaos in the last two weeks of Art's life. This movie was based on a story written by David Mccumber who wrote a Rated X based on the testimonials of Artie's Ex-Girlfriends, his mother and his murderer. I Caleb Mitchell feel slandered but apparently my dad was a public figure, so anyone can say anything, it doesn't matter

I am not a fan of the brothers who dominate this flick, but they seem to play against type well enough that this doesn't matter. Everyone who'd watch this movie knows about the Mitchells at least slightly, so I'll talk more about the way they're rendered here: Emilio renders Jim Mitchell as basically the more mature older brother and Arty is, of course, the free-wheeling schmuck Jim feels indebted to. They make what is essentially "Vanilla Porn" in the sense that apparently none of the more non-mainstream fetishes usually (probably often rightly) considered perversions are visible, like pedophelia, corpophelia, bestiality, rape or snuff is included. And as a result of living something that is considered a societal fringe in the Seventies, they have a drug-induced downfall. Who would have seen that coming?Still, to me, the downfall is played with enough reality (Arty seems to remain slightly sympathetic even during his depths, except for when he expects a spouse is doing someone behind his back) and I'd say sympathy that it felt like a fresh experience to me. But that's just me: I don't watch too much aside from nerdy stuff. Frankly, I think that it beats Boogie Nights because there's no Mark Wahlbergs or Burt Reynolds around, and most important, no Paul Thomas Anderson. Estevez isn't the most humble guy, but at least he didn't approach the material in such a seemingly "I'll make sure everyone pays attention to how well I directed this thing instead of how good the story or things that happen in it are supposed to be." There's nothing really elaborate like that painful three minute opening and not the ton of cutesy dialogue. It's a much more bare-bones production, which I usually like. Plus, I like the commentary track. God help me, but I do.