director
Joel Schumacher
screenwriter
Andrew
Kevin Walker
producers
Judy Hofflund
Gavin Polone
Joel Schumacher
cinematographer
Robert Elswit
music
Mychael Danna
editor
Mark Stevens
cast
Nicolas Cage (Tom Welles)
Joaquin Phoenix (Max California)
James Gandolfini (Eddie Poole)
Peter Stormare (Dino Velvet)
Anthony Heald (Daniel Longdale)
Chris Bauer (Machine)
Catherine Keener (Amy Welles)
mpaa rating: R
running time: 123m
u.s.
release: February 26,
1999
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other joel
schumacher films
reviewed on this website:
- batman
forever
- batman
and robin
- falling
down
- phone
booth
- a
time to kill
- veronica
guerin
|
There
are some people, I'm sure, who will defend the pointlessly ugly
and monotonous 8mm because of those very qualities. It's
dark, twisted, repulsive, daring! Let's stand back and admire
the filmmakers' stark integrity! Uh, no, let's not. If I lifted
a rock and pointed a camera at the squirming things underneath
for two hours, would you praise my uncompromising vision? No,
you'd say it's gross and stupid. 8mm sets a new record
for gross stupidity; it drags us through the dregs and doesn't
even reward us with anything original.
A can of film is found in the secret vault of a recently deceased
billionaire. It appears to be a snuff film -- pornography climaxing
in the murder of a teenage girl. The billionaire's widow hires
private investigator Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage) to find out whether
the film is real or faked. The assignment starts Tom -- a family
man with a wife (Catherine Keener) and baby daughter perpetually
waiting at home -- on a numbingly squalid odyssey through the
porn underworld. Along the way, he picks up an unlikely partner
-- Max California (Joaquin Phoenix), a porn-shop clerk who seems
to know every two-bit sleaze merchant on both coasts. They make
a funny team for a while, a bit of levity on this grim journey,
and the movie could have used a whole lot more of the smart,
quirky Phoenix.
My expectations for 8mm were split, because the director
is Joel Schumacher, who either banalizes anything he touches
(A
Time to Kill, Falling
Down) or turns it into eye candy for hyperactive kids
(Batman
Forever and Batman
and Robin); yet the screenwriter is Andrew Kevin Walker,
who penned the diabolical serial-killer entry Seven.
Judging from 8mm and Seven, Walker likes to explore
squalor and madness; his work on Seven managed to be philosophical
while packing a sensationalistic, National Enquirer
wallop. Here, though, he just rubs our noses in slime, and it's
less shocking than degrading and depressing. We get glimpses
of pathetic men lurking in underground fringe-porn shops, browsing
videos of rape, bestiality, child pornography. It's as if Walker
had just zeroed in on one deadly sin, lust, and the movie shows
no sexuality -- much less any erotica -- that isn't diseased
and foul. Anti-porn zealots should love 8mm, yet another
conservative movie in disguise.
In the past, good actors have saved Schumacher from disaster,
but nobody here can do much with their roles -- not the usually
amusing James Galdolfini (as a sleaze-porn producer), not the
hatchet-faced Peter Stormare (as "Dino Velvet," a gonzo-porn
director in the mold of Gregory Dark), and especially not poor
Catherine Keener, stuck at home whining on the phone while cuddling
her baby in every possible shot. Nicolas Cage, too, seems to
be coasting; this is essentially his yearning, puppy-eyed performance
from City
of Angels, a fatal mistake here. Such a sensitive, floppy-eared
soul hardly seems credible as a private investigator (he also
sets a movie record for gun-dropping). All Cage has going for
him is his decency and determination to crack the mystery.
But then it's such a lame mystery. 8mm reminded me of
a parade of far better films: The
Silence of the Lambs was better at detailing the sadness
of self-hating girls kidnapped and killed to satisfy evil pleasures;
Strange
Days and Videodrome got deeper into the implications
of snuff films; Man
Bites Dog, a great obscure film from 1993, probed the
stark pornography of murder in ways that were truly shocking;
Hardcore, modelled on John Ford's The Searchers,
had a more compelling narrative arrow (the father rescuing his
wayward daughter); and Seven at least provided a damn
motive for its killer, twisted though it was. What's repulsive
about 8mm isn't what it shows us; it's that it shows us
these things and then tells us there's no meaning to any of it.
In 8mm, we keep getting spritzed with callow nihilism:
People make snuff films "because they can," people
watch young girls butchered because they "felt like it,"
people kill and torture because they "want to." There's
no answer; fuck it; this is how the world is. Gee, thanks, guys.
The true meaning of that girl's death, finally, is a big opening
weekend for Columbia. |
