Scumacher's new film '8mm' falls short of expectations
By Tam Notosusanto
JAKARTA (JP): Nicolas Cage has now established a certain cinematic charisma, that of a heroic, but still human, law enforcer. In The Rock, Snake Eyes, half of Face/Off (in which he and John Travolta take turns playing both the hero and the baddie) and now 8mm, he has appeared as various police officers and federal agents, and has won the approval of the moviegoing crowd, who turn those movies into box-office hits. Not bad for an actor who spent the first years of his career playing weirdos, losers, goons and a cockroach-eating vampire.
In 8mm, Cage is once again on the side of the law, playing Tom Welles, a private investigator who caters to high-class confidential clients. The movie begins with Welles being hired by a wealthy elderly widow who is curious about a particular object she discovers in her recently deceased husband's safe: an eight- millimeter film reel. What harries her is that the film turns out to be an ostensibly pornographic film which portrays the brutal abuse and murder of the young woman featured in it. Welles is assigned the task of finding out whether the murder depicted in the film is real and what really happened to the girl.
8mm proceeds with the usual routine of a detective story as Welles goes about searching for the identity of the girl. As soon as he learns who she is -- a teenager fleeing an unhappy home -- Welles tracks her down to California, where her diary suggests she may intend to pursue a movie acting career.
Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker apparently didn't intend the film to be your usual gumshoe flick. He is presenting a trip into the dark world of S&M and pornography, just like what Paul Schrader did in his 1978 legendary film Hardcore. Hence we see Welles visiting porn shops to find the link between the girl and the snuff film in which she appears to be killed. He then encounters Max California (Joaquin Phoenix), a porn shop attendant who later agrees to help him.
Guided by Max, Welles continues his search for snufffilms, to no avail. Instead, he only meets hostile shop owners and peddlers who bark at him: "There are no such things!" Nevertheless, after delving into a pile of ersatz snuff films they managed to get hold of, Welles finds some clues that lead him to a local smut film producer, Eddie Poole (James Gandolfini) and a New York- based porn filmmaker, Dino Velvet (Peter Stormare). Welles becomes convinced that the late billionaire Mr. Christian paid these men to make the snuff film in which the missing girl gets murdered. He subsequently plans to set up the thugs to incriminate them for the heinous killing.
Just like Seven, Walker's brilliant screenwriting feat, 8mm paints a world filled with dark and evil minds into which the innocent hero ventures. "Dance with the devil and the devil don't change, the devil changes you," warns the seemingly more experienced Max to Welles as the detective begins his journey into Hades. Indeed, Welles risks being corrupted by the pornography underworld he is swimming in as he performs his assignment. The script includes subtle -- if not cliched -- ironies in the kinds of individuals inhabiting the story: a distinguished citizen possessing a lethal perversion, a porn shop attendant who secretly reads Capote and Nietzsche, a murderous hulk whose face looks like your neighborhood bank clerk. But the most interesting question it proposes is whether a clean, ethical professional like Tom Welles can be tempted to make way for his dark side once the circumstances shove him to a corner.
However, none of these things matter anymore since Walker had the misfortune of having his script being brought to the screen by Joel Schumacher. Here's a director famous for concocting shallow, insipid movies disguised as clever, highly artistic motion pictures. Just think of the high-profile concepts that the likes of Flatliners (the afterlife) and A Time to Kill (a race- related courtroom drama) offer and see what kinds of movies they turned out to be. Schumacher even betrayed Tim Burton's visionary Batman series by making the derisive Batman Forever and Batman & Robin.
Walker reportedly walked out during the filming of 8mm due to creative differences with Schumacher and the reason is apparent. The film has a nice build-up as Welles conducts his investigation and nears his target. Gary Wissner's elaborate set pieces even try hard to convince us we are entering a parallel universe of the pornography underground. But as soon as we meet the cartoonist porn filmmaker delivered by Stormare's overacting, credibility flies out the window and the movie starts to fall apart. And it comes crashing to the ground as the vigilante aspect of the plot becomes the excuse for Schumacher to indulge his barbaric tendencies: turning Cage into a bad imitator of Mel Gibson's sadistic executioner in Payback.
The only praiseworthy element of the film is Amy Morton's heart-wrenching turn in her brief scenes as the dead girl's mother. Even her final, mournful voice-over nicely zips up this ambitious movie that turns ugly. Aside from her, 8mm doesn't really deserve a single inch of celluloid.