# 8MM (1999)

### reviewed by
Jamey Hughton

    8MM
    ** (out of five stars)
    A review by Jamey Hughton

    Starring-Nicolas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix, James Gandolfini,
    Peter Stormare, Chris Bauer and Catherine Keener
    Director-Joel Schumacher
    Rated 18A
    Released February 1999
    Sony
    Reviewed July 1999

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8MM is not going to enlighten your day. It's a dark, grimy and disturbing portrait of underworld snuff films and filled with excessive violence. Not only do you need the stomach to make it through this bloated mess, you'll require a lot of patience as well.

Nicolas Cage seems to be doing quite a bit of overacting as of late. He wore a bizarre get-up and did a lot of yelling in the terminally awful Snake Eyes, and here he attempts a performance that can relate to someone completely losing their grip on reality. Cage plays Private Investigator Tom Welles, praised for his secrecy and reliability. At home, Welles is a family man, with a wife (Catherine Keener) and a small daughter to take care of. His new assignment is a bizarre one: the wife of a formally deceased millionaire has hired him to solve a mystery regarding a film found in her husband's safe. The film appears to be some kind of cheap pornography involving a teenage girl and a masked man, until the girl is brutally murdered. Or so it seems.

Welles, of course, begins to burrow deeper and deeper to uncover the truth. And the more he becomes involved in this disturbing case, the more he gets in over his head. He hires an adult book store clerk named Max California (Joaquin Phoenix) to be his guide through the ugly underworld of pornography. Max knows what Welles is getting himself into, and explains, `you dance with the devil, the devil don't change. The devil changes you.' These turn out to be very wise words.

8MM has a premise that begs for a better execution. The set-up is slick and well played, as Cage uncovers the identity of the girl and travels to Hollywood to locate her. This is where everything goes awry. Although director Joel Schumacher succeeds in frightening us with his grotesque portrait of the `real world', he forgot to inject any interest or excitement to the formula. Everything about the movie becomes dull and lifeless, repelling the viewer like the effect of bug spray to insects. Although it had enormous potential, the third act of 8MM is a total bust, leaving intrigued audiences in a baffling state of extreme disappointment as the proceedings spiral out of control.

Cage is the film's sole flame of energy. His performance is actually believable, but soon the director's demands start to weigh heavily on his shoulder and he begins stumbling along in desperation. Still, you've got to give him credit for holding this project together as long as he did, for that is no easy feat when you consider the problems at hand.

Welles' trail soon leads him to a bizarre filmmaker (played convincingly by Peter Stormare) who is notorious for the hardest-hitting snuff films in the industry. This is where Cage goes over the edge into a serial killer-like phase, in which he must take revenge on all those who murdered the innocent girl in the film. He tracks down the masked man responsible for the killing (Chris Bauer), and they have a bloody brawl in the local cemetery, a fight sequence that would look more at home in a Schwarzenegger movie. Written by Andrew Kevin Walker, 8MM dissipates into a poor man's Seven, with all the violence but little of the effectiveness that made the latter such a chilling masterpiece. Furthermore, what has become of Joel Schumacher? The director has recently experienced a major drought, slumming in the depths of dismal flop after flop (Batman and Robin, anyone?). This putrid thriller is certainly not going to revive his career, so perhaps Schumacher should start exploring his lighter side.

    (C) 1999, Jamey Hughton

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