8MM
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Columbia Pictures Director: Joel Schumacher Writer: Andrew Kevin Walker Cast: Nicolas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix, James Gandolfini, Peter Stomare, Anthony Heald, Catherine Keener
If you found a porno tape discarded in the trash, would you take it home and screen it? Destroy it so that no one could do so? Would you instead take it right to the police? Would you simply pass it by? The chances are that whatever you answer, you could not justifiably be labeled a pervert for your curiosity. But now take another situation. You see in the trash what looks like a snuff film. What would you do? For the more pristine among us, let it be known that a snuff film takes s&m to its extreme. Such a work depicts the actual brutalization and murder of a woman at the hands of one or more sadistic men. From what I hear, the vast majority and perhaps all snuff films in existence are fakes. Given the ability of today's movie technology to do just about anything you want it to, it would be no difficult matter to feign a sadistic killing and to pay the "victim" for her role. After all, why show the real thing if nobody can really take a fake from the McCoy? Simple: there are people out there willing to pay big bucks to witness actual murders close up, and then to pocket the film for future viewing.
After you see this new psychological thriller featuring Nicolas Cage and directed by Joel Schumacher ("The Client," "A Time to Kill"), you could not be blamed if you decided to do absolutely nothing but to get as far away from a snuff clip as you can. Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage), a private investigator, chose otherwise, and got himself and a number of others into a heap of trouble, almost destroying his marriage and losing his life in the bargain. Though he emerges a hero, he treads way over the line of duty. Any rational person in his shoes would have turned his situation over to the police, but in this taut story penned by Andrew Kevin Walker ("Seven"), Welles becomes obsessed with what is easily the most exotic and dangerous case he has handled.
The first person who should have let sleeping dogs lie is the fabulously wealthy Mrs. Christian (Myra Carter) who upon her husband's death discovers a small reel of 8 millimeter film in his wall safe. The film depicts the violent death of a 16-old-girl by a masked sadist, who beats her and then plunges a knife into her chest in order to capture the girl's look of absolute terror at the moment of impact. (Yes, Virginia, apparently there are people who get off on this sort of thing.) The wheelchair-bound widow hasn't the foggiest idea what the film is doing in her late husband's possession, and hires Welles to find out whether the murder was actual or simulated. Treating the situation as a missing persons case, Welles discovers the identity of the victim, interviews the girl's mother, Mrs. Mathews (Amy Morton), travels from his Harrisburg, Pennsylvania home to the runaway teen's Hollywood destination, and becomes immersed in every level of the porno industry. He buddies up with a smart, adult bookstore clerk, Max California (Joaquin Phoenix), and ultimately exchanges details of the case with some of the sleaziest individuals seen on the screen since scripter Andrew Kevin Walker's depravity-bathed movie "Seven."
"8mm" starts calmly as though Tom Welles were a modern Perry Mason rationally investigating a predicament, but director Joel Schumacher steadily turns on the tension as the obsessed Welles sinks deeply into the muck of the underground porn distributors. As Welles meets such dirt bags as Dino Velvet (Peter Stomare), the artistic director of the snuff works; Eddie Poole (James Gandolfini), whose studio deals in the films; and Machine (Chris Bauer), a black- hooded individual who performs the alleged murders--we in the audience are left to ponder Welles' motivation for risking his neck over a complete stranger who may not even be dead. Does he see his own baby daughter, or even his concerned and frightened wife Amy (Catherine Keener) as a potential victim of these vermin? Or does he become himself turned on by the intrigue of the seedy industry?
"8mm" is for an audience that relished David Fincher's 1995 movie "Seven," which featured a striking cast including Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey and Gwyneth Paltrow. "8mm" s not as well crafted as screenwriter Walker's previous film, which was exceptionally organized as a search for a serial killer out to punish those who commit one or more of the seven deadly sins. But it's virtually as unsettling, considerably more violent, and likewise appears to wallow in human depravity. Nicolas Cage, whose career took off after portrayals of eccentric characters in offbeat movies like "Raising Arizona" and "Moonstruck," is appropriately called one of the great actors of his generation (he's 34). Said to have had two of his teeth pulled for his role in "Birdy," swallowed a live cockroach for his part in "Vampire's Kills," and slashed his arm while preparing to take on "Racing with the Moon," he is the ideal choice to portray the intensity of a man obsessed with finding a killer and making the acquaintance of men on whose sight you'd not hesitate to cross the street. He is ably paired with the California porn industry's only good-guy, played by Joaquim Phoenix as a guy who reluctantly takes a gig selling sleaze but who reads Truman Capote disguised within a porno paperback cover.
Cage becomes as violent as Mel Gibson's Porter in Brian Helgeland's "Payback," and features one off-the-wall filmmaker played by Peter Stomare (an expert with the crossbow who takes pride in directing teen murder) and the owner of a film company played by James Gandolfini who self-destructively curses a man bent on revenge, daring him to pull the trigger. As though the on-screen violence is insufficient to get the audience juices flowing, Mychael Danna raises the intensity with an unusual score featuring Middle Eastern music at one point. Photographer Robert Elswit keeps us in the dark a good deal of the time, particularly when demonstrating the nitty gritty, but puts outdoor Hollywood in a coarse light to signal its spunkier side.
Those of us who want to see a major statement promulgated by the film will point to the latest incidents of man's inhumanity to man--in Kosovo, in Bosnia, in Sierra Leone--butchery that appears to be done for its own sake, for the pleasure it brings to the killers. Others will see "8mm" as a popcorn flick, yet another effective and furious product from Hollywood's dream factory. In either case, consider leaving grandma home this time around.
Rated R. Running Time: 122 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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