8MM (1999)

This was meant to be the gritty, nasty follow-up to Seven - not a follow up as a sequel, but in the same vein with the same atmosphere. Joel Schumacher wanted to get away from the bad rep he got from his Batman adventures and decided to do it as nasty as he could do it - which might not be the most extreme, but still enough to get the MPAA a heart attack. Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker first saw his vision getting "destroyed" by Schumacher and then did the MPAA the last to kill it. The result is was 8MM, a fine movie, a thriller trying to be nasty but never goes the whole way.

Nic Cage plays a private investigator who one day gets a job to identify the girl on an 8 mm film, owned by a recently deceased multi-billionaire. A snuff movie! His old wife wants to know if what's on the piece of film is real and Cage is sent out to find out what happened to her. Soon he's drawn into the dirty, seedy underground of extreme porn and the traces leads from Los Angeles to New York and the producer of very arty, S&M skin flicks. There's no turning back now, Mr Cage. Grab your pay check, prepare your botox and show us what extreme porn is!

I think Joel Schumacher really wanted to do something down and gritty here. I have no idea how Andrew Kevin Walker's original vision looked like, but I guess it had somehow less clichés and another wild guess is that it ended a lot less happier. Maybe the death of the main character or his family, similar to what happen in Seven. Something giving the ultimate sacrifice because he can't stop turning the knife in a wound that's getting more and rotten. It's about crimes that can't be explain, so why bother?

8MM has an interesting storyline, more or less based on three styles, three story's to be told. The first one is a mystery, the middle one is a thriller and the last one is about revenge. They more or less have their own beginnings and end, with their own supporting actors and Nic Cage chewing the scenery in-between. This is a great idea and it works excellent, but also gives us the feeling that there's no end - it just goes on and on and on. I can imagine this was a difficult thing for the mainstream-loving American audience, sitting there with their popcorns and cokes wanting another grisly serial killer thriller and gets a very depressive dive into sexual hell.

This is a very melodramatic film. I like that. I love big emotions, big twists, big everything and 8MM - who probably wanted something more Seven-esque from the beginning - tries hard to be serious and low-key, but with a nuthouse like Nic Cage in the lead it goes straight to over-the-top heaven. And that's awesome, I love it. And Cage is actually quite toned down here, one of his more realistic performances since the eighties. But the true heroes is the fantastic supporting cast, from the always brilliant Anthony Heald (kinda reprising his snake from Silence of the Lambs) to Joaquin Phoenix and Peter Stormare to James Gandolfini and Chris Bauer. Also watch out for Norma Reedus in a very small part and poor Catherine Keener playing yet another one of Hollywood's staying-at-home-and-cry-wives. A great actress wasted.

What feels less fresh today is the depiction of "alternative cultures", because in the world of 8MM alternative cultures are always fucked-up, drug addicts, paedophiles, rapists, criminals - all while wearing their odd clothes and colourful haircuts. It's actually quite silly, bordering to parody sometimes - but it works because the whole movie breaths big, bold, beautiful and middle class perversity.

I love it. It's like watching something like The Adventurers - but dealing with snuff and sex instead. What's there not to love?

And for you who wants something more, check out my review of the rip-off directed by Bruno Mattei, Snuff Trap! That's cheesy sleaze at it's best!