"Rated X" is a hidden gem of a biopic. Emilio Estevez maximizes the film's tame budget to deliver a power-smack of familial drama.
You can't help but equate the real-life brother factor of Emilio Estevez and Martin Sheen playing siblings with addiction problems.
Their performances here are not easily forgotten.
Art and Jim Mitchell, purveyors of porn who made the hugely successful porn film "Behind The Green Door," went on to run San Francisco's famous O'Farrell Theatre.
It was one of the first porn houses to feature live sex acts. Hunter S. Thompson is said to have worked at the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre in the late '80s, as preparation for a book he was working on.
Jim Mitchell (Emilio Estevez) and Art Mitchell call each other Bob, their overbearing father's name.
The on-the-nose irony is not lost on the brothers' fraught relationship that unravels beneath the weight of drugs, sex, lawsuits, and divorces.
Tasteful, dramatic, and fascinating, "Rated X" is a damned good movie that is sorely overlooked.
This is one wild ride of a biopic.
Rated R. 115 mins.
