8mm  

8mm is directed by Joel Shumacher (Batman & Robin, Falling down) and (partly) written by Andrew Kevin Walker (Seven). Considering that Seven wasn’t the most optimistic movie ever created, it’s no surprise that 8mm is dark and pessimistic. Rather than the brutal mass murders of Seven, 8mm takes us to the shady underworld of pornography.

The main character is the professional private detective Tom Wells – played by Nicholas Cage. One day he’s contacted by the recent widow of a rich and powerfull old magnat. She has found a 8mm film in her husbands private safe. The film shows a masked man who seemingly is sadistically beating and abusing a young girl to death. The widow wants to find out who the girl is, if she’s alive and why the film was in her husbands safe.

Wells accepts the mission. The search for the girl and the people who made the film takes Wells to a world where S&M (sado-machistive) and violent porn is everyday stuff and and things border on the illegal.

To his aid comes a porn-store assistant and wanna-be-musician Max – who acts as the comic relief in this otherwise dark movie. He acts as a guide and helps Wells through an increasingly nasty environment.

Soon enough Wells finds both the masked man – a nasty beast of a man named Machine – the cameraman, and the arranger. The girl was indeed "snuffed" the movie a custom job ordered by Mr. [name] for a large sum of money. Absolutely horrified and without any means to drag them in for justice, Wells takes matters in his own hands and kills all involved in the revolting deed. Thus he himself almost becomes a beast.

Up to the point when Wells finds the "snuffers", 8mm is a pretty good, pretty well acted detective story set in a dark and sinister environment, nicely filmed and choreographed.

But immediately after the introduction of Machine & Co (incidentally the same time as when Peter Stormare, who was widely critisised for his role, shows up ) the movie falls into the predictable "bad-guys-must-die" theme where the hero eventually prevails and the villains must die in various gruesome ways (and in this case they really do die in gruesome ways).

In the end you feel that 8mm is a badly executed film that just wallows in... without giving anything back to the viewer.

See the trailer here