Rated 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.

This 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.

Come 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.

Despite 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!)