8MM **½ (out of four) -a review by Bill Chambers ( 8mm@filmfreakcentral.net )
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starring Nicolas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker directed by Joel Schumacher
Last summer, I was slipped a copy of Andrew Kevin Walker's 8MM screenplay. As someone who considers David Fincher's Se7en (also penned by Walker) one of the most important films of the 1990s, I couldn't resist opening the yellow covers of "eight millimeter" and spoiling the eventual film that would come of it. What I read essentially made it to the screen intact-but 8MM is brought to you by Joel "Batman and Robin" Schumacher, a director not known for subtlety or restraint.
Cage stars as private dick Tom Welles, an educated husband and father who is summoned to a stately manor one night to meet with Mrs. Christian (Myra Carter), the wealthy widow of a steel investor. She felt at liberty to open her late husband's secret safe; inside it sat a reel of eight millimeter film depicting a young woman's brutal murder. Mrs. Christian needs to know if this "snuff" film is the real thing; she hopes to preserve her husband's good name.
Welles' investigation takes him to the underbelly of Los Angeles. He learns the (possibly) snuffed woman's name and last known address. He also hooks up with a porn shop employee named Max California (Phoenix) to ascertain what kind of mooncalfs would manufacture such depravity. For a considerable amount of dough, the intelligent and bored Max provides Welles with sufficient leads. So sufficient they may just get Welles killed: Welles has stirred sleeping dogs Eddie Poole (Gandolfini), a hothead producer, Dino Velvet (an over-the-top Stormare), a crossbow-wielding director, and rubber-masked Machine (Chris Bauer), a notorious star of S&M videos who lives for torture.
Because I have the unique critical perspective of someone who read the screenplay before seeing the film, I cannot resist noting two crucial differences between the written word and the final cut. In Walker's 5/06/97 draft, Max delivers a powerful monologue regarding the desensitization experienced by hard-core porn watchers-he hypothesizes that the snuff film is the next logical evolutionary step for the industry. It's a disheartening speech, but one that (further) elevates 8MM beyond schlock. Schumacher chose to remove it for reasons unknown. Walker also stated that we never see Machine's face, but Schuamcher can't resist the urge and shows Bauer in mask-less close-up, thereby deflating the line "You were expecting a monster?"
Still, there is a lot to admire in 8MM, particularly the Cimmerian lighting designs of cinematographer Robert Elswit and Canadian composer Mychael Danna's melancholy, sitar-laced score. Schumacher and his team have also crafted some puissant individual sequences; although I realized I was watching the umpteenth variation on Taxi Driver, Welles' inevitable vigilante rampage is an unbearably sad sight. (Aside: 8MM is also, at times, unbearably suspenseful.) The politics of 8MM are vaguely right wing-its general attitude is reminiscent of Schumacher's other decent picture, Falling Down-and un-hip, but Welles' (un-PC) reactions to the vile stimuli around him are honest and somewhat comforting. It's not that Welles becomes the ultimate Boy Scout; on the contrary, he has a selfish need for justice, a desire to "unsee" the horrors he has witnessed and cleanse his soul.
A few things nagged at me as I watched 8MM in the darkened theatre: Catherine Keener, unparalleled at portraying icy career women (most recently in Your Friends and Neighbors), is miscast as Cage's housewife, though it's nice to see her find work in studio pictures at last; the pacing is off-the first half could use tightening; and Max California's abrupt exit from the film is a directorial misstep. Overall, however, Schumacher proves that he's capable of crafting an absorbing film so long as the source material is not generated by Akiva Goldsman. 8MM's best scene is shown briefly in the trailer: with only the clickety-clackety motor of the projector on the soundtrack, Welles sits in a blackened room, viewing a grainy, possibly faked murder of a teenage runaway, overcome by grief and terror. And I stared back at him, sharing his pain, thankful I'm not a sick puppy. Neither is Schumacher.
-March, 1999
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