BEFORE: From a nice family Christmas film about bank robbery, it's on to a film about the intersection of pornography and commerce. John Ashton carries over from "Trapped in Paradise". I've accidentally programmed two films back-to-back from the same director, George Gallo, this has probably happened before, maybe without me being aware of it. Of course I've planned runs of films from the same director, Bergman and such, but it's interesting that following the actor linking can also cause this to happen accidentally. Gallo, of course, also wrote "Midnight Run" and co-wrote "Bad Boys".
THE PLOT: Jack Harris, one of the pioneers of internet commerce, wrestles with his morals and struggles not to drown in a sea of con men, mobsters, drug addicts and porn stars.
AFTER: There probably is some truth here, but it's buried under so much of the usual Hollywood B.S., particularly about all the ways that Hollywood writers THINK the way the world works - how the FBI pursue criminals, how the Russian mob tortures people, etc. that it's now nearly impossible to separate truth from fiction. There was no "Jack Harris" involved in the creation of the internet, for a while I thought maybe this was a true story, but I think I was thinking of Jack Abramoff? Not sure. Anyway, Wikipedia tells me that this IS loosely based on the stories of Christopher Mallick, who was associated with early internet billing companies like Paycom. Paycom was one of the first companies that figured out how to take a credit card order over the web, and mostly it was used by sites that then exchanged those payments for porn.
Yes, in the time before Amazon, before we used our credit cards to buy books, groceries, shoes and nearly everything else over the interwebs, the first sites to really strike it rich by creating this "secret sauce" were the porn sites. This really shouldn't come as a surprise, because porn is why VHS won out over Beta, why cable beat broadcast TV, before that it was why "Lady Chatterley's Lover" became a best-seller and it's probably also why some cave paintings were more popular than others. In the future, it will be why one virtual reality Matrix will take over the world, and why Earth will survive in the Federation of Planets, because the aliens won't want to blow up the planet that makes the best pornos. Let's assume, but I'm getting ahead of myself here.
"Jack Harris" is a problem-solver, and Wayne and Buck, the two guys who figured out how to sell porn on the web to people with credit cards, well, they had a lot of problems. Maybe it's the fact that one of the actors was also in "The Rum Diary", but the two men remind me of Hunter S. Thompson characters, always stoned or drunk, and when they finally figure out how to make a couple million, they high-tail it off to Vegas like Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo, and they hole up in the penthouse suite of a casino with a bunch of hookers. Good times, but then the Russian mob shows up and wants the 25% of their business that they promised him, in exchange for posting footage of his best strippers on the web.
Problem-solver Jack gets them off the hook with the Russians, gets them free and clear of the other shady person who wanted to invest in their business, and as a by-product, porn becomes the engine that drives the internet bus, as it should be, as it always was going to be. And Jack spends a couple years living away from his wife and kids in Houston before he gets busy with a stripper who's got a thriving porn site of her own, where she only does solo stuff. Jack's whole plan was to earn enough money in just a few years to be set for life with his family, and then he goes and blows the marriage up, which is believable, guys will do that sometimes.
The business really takes off when they change the name of their billing company to "24/7 billing.com", which looks really innocent on a credit card bill, especially to men's wives, but probably not to someone else who also regularly uses that same service for the same reason. But then the FBI gets involved, because they find out that certain wanted Muslim terrorists also use this service to pay for THEIR porn (it's complicated, but they like the girl-girl stuff and the girls-with-guns stuff, allegedly) and since they "log on" pretty regularly from different locations, it makes a great terrorist tracking service for the Feds.
Hey, it's all fun and games until the mob resorts to kidnapping and murder, right? Come on, is this REALLY how the internet caught on? I've got my doubts. Maybe if all this had gone down differently, all porn everywhere would be FREE, as God intended. Wait, it actually is, if you just look a little bit harder for it.
I'm off for a few days - we're flying to Chicago tomorrow for our first real vacation (not a road trip) since this crazy nutty pandemic thing started, fifteen months back. I somehow got ahead on my movie count by doubling up, even though I'm currently working two jobs and have no time to think. I'll try to watch ONE movie while in Chicago, and that's my Father's Day film which is on Netflix so I can watch on my phone - but I won't be able to post the review until we get back on Tuesday night, so I'll be on radio silence until then, probably.
Also starring Luke Wilson (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2010)), Giovanni Ribisi (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), Gabriel Macht (last seen in "The Recruit"), James Caan (last seen in "Dogville"), Jacinda Barrett (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Kevin Pollak (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Laura Ramsey (last seen in "Are You Here"), Rade Serbedzija (last seen in "Taken 2"), Terry Crews (last heard in "The Willoughbys"), Kelsey Grammer (last seen in "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising"), Graham McTavish (last seen in "King Arthur"), Robert Forster (last seen in "Cleaner"), Jason Antoon (last seen in "The Rewrite"), Martin Kove (last seen in "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood"), Diane Sorrentino, Stacey Alysson, Robert Della Cerra, Dexter Jasper, Bubba Ganter (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), Melissa Bustamante, Claudia Jordan, Hunter Gomez (last seen in "National Treasure"), Christian Michael Clark, Brady Stanley, Julie Lott, with cameos from Shannon Whirry, Jesse Jane, Frank Pesce (also carrying over from "Trapped in Paradise")
RATING: 4 out of 10 filthy website names
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