8MM is a good looking film. With a solid cast, a powerful premise, moody lighting and a feel for atmosphere, it is a slick thriller with flowing action. However, if you prefer smarts to good looks there's no way to feel but cheated. This film is but a pale version of what it could have been in the hands of a serious director willing to take some risks.
Certain kinds of material can't be taken lightly. If you're going to make a film about sexual violence you should be aiming at more than just entertainment. 8MM aims to reveal some of the darkest corners of the human mind, where sexual perversion goes hand in hand with extreme violence, murder and psychopathy. The mere conception that this snuff-world exists, an underground porno-industry with thematics like sexual assault, real acts of rape and murder caught on film, and that some people are attracted to this kind of material to satisfy their sick forms of desire, is absolutely scary. Private investigator Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage) goes into the heart of this world to discover if such a film, of a girl being violently assaulted and murdered, is real or not, and who's behind it. It is one of the strongest premises to a film I've ever seen, and it could have been a real classic, comparable to `Seven' and `Silence of the Lambs'. The errand of Tom Welles reminded me of Friedkin's `Cruising', where Al Pacino plays an undercover cop in pursuit of a serial killer obsessed with gay sado-masochist practices.
8MM promised such a descent into hell. `If you dance with the devil, the devil doesn't change, he changes you'. That is the key-idea of the plot. To find out the truth, the main character has to plunge deep into this world of madness, and by doing so, he'll have to risk his own sanity. Cage says that in the movie: `I want to understand!'. But it's an empty plot he's working with. Although affected, Welles never looses his balance entirely. Why is he obsessed with this murder? Why does he want revenge? If this had been a brave script, the Welles character should have become obsessed with these movies. To understand the psychopathic attraction of repulse. In fact, his very own balance with insanity should have been the reason for his need for revenge. Because maybe that perversion, although repulsive to him, is also attractive to the darkest corners of his mind. The more you see, the more you don't mind seeing. And it should be that hatred, the hatred for his own weakness, that is the weakness of the human soul, that should be the drive for his need for revenge.
Maybe a director like Fincher would be willing to explore that path. Joel Schumacher certainly isn't. The visual dress-up of this movie, with stylish looks, dark photography and strong colors, doesn't hide that fact. We never get to understand who Welles really is. His family problems are not explored, and the growing threat to his family is never entirely believable. The scene where Cage makes a phone call to the girl's mother before killing Gandolfini, to get `permission' to perpetrate revenge, is unrealistic and simply ridiculous. The final confrontation with the Machine character is the sum up of this movie's failure. In a script that doesn't develop this character the way it should, all you get is the Machine mumbling some psychological explanations with no consequence to the story. The simple fact that all this needs to be verbalized is a demonstration of what Schumacher was unable to show with his direction. And it's a real shame. A story like this had potential to explore tremendously strong solutions. I have nothing against happy endings, but what are we supposed to conclude from this?
Just look at `Seven'. You can't have a film telling you the world is a horrible place, but they live happily ever after.
Certain kinds of material can't be taken lightly. If you're going to make a film about sexual violence you should be aiming at more than just entertainment. 8MM aims to reveal some of the darkest corners of the human mind, where sexual perversion goes hand in hand with extreme violence, murder and psychopathy. The mere conception that this snuff-world exists, an underground porno-industry with thematics like sexual assault, real acts of rape and murder caught on film, and that some people are attracted to this kind of material to satisfy their sick forms of desire, is absolutely scary. Private investigator Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage) goes into the heart of this world to discover if such a film, of a girl being violently assaulted and murdered, is real or not, and who's behind it. It is one of the strongest premises to a film I've ever seen, and it could have been a real classic, comparable to `Seven' and `Silence of the Lambs'. The errand of Tom Welles reminded me of Friedkin's `Cruising', where Al Pacino plays an undercover cop in pursuit of a serial killer obsessed with gay sado-masochist practices.
8MM promised such a descent into hell. `If you dance with the devil, the devil doesn't change, he changes you'. That is the key-idea of the plot. To find out the truth, the main character has to plunge deep into this world of madness, and by doing so, he'll have to risk his own sanity. Cage says that in the movie: `I want to understand!'. But it's an empty plot he's working with. Although affected, Welles never looses his balance entirely. Why is he obsessed with this murder? Why does he want revenge? If this had been a brave script, the Welles character should have become obsessed with these movies. To understand the psychopathic attraction of repulse. In fact, his very own balance with insanity should have been the reason for his need for revenge. Because maybe that perversion, although repulsive to him, is also attractive to the darkest corners of his mind. The more you see, the more you don't mind seeing. And it should be that hatred, the hatred for his own weakness, that is the weakness of the human soul, that should be the drive for his need for revenge.
Maybe a director like Fincher would be willing to explore that path. Joel Schumacher certainly isn't. The visual dress-up of this movie, with stylish looks, dark photography and strong colors, doesn't hide that fact. We never get to understand who Welles really is. His family problems are not explored, and the growing threat to his family is never entirely believable. The scene where Cage makes a phone call to the girl's mother before killing Gandolfini, to get `permission' to perpetrate revenge, is unrealistic and simply ridiculous. The final confrontation with the Machine character is the sum up of this movie's failure. In a script that doesn't develop this character the way it should, all you get is the Machine mumbling some psychological explanations with no consequence to the story. The simple fact that all this needs to be verbalized is a demonstration of what Schumacher was unable to show with his direction. And it's a real shame. A story like this had potential to explore tremendously strong solutions. I have nothing against happy endings, but what are we supposed to conclude from this?
Just look at `Seven'. You can't have a film telling you the world is a horrible place, but they live happily ever after.