8mm
(Sony Region 1 NTSC DVD)
(1999)
review by Died with Boots On

Private investigator Tom Welles (Cage) resonates with the clockwork of a Swiss watch, anal-retentively slogging through minefields of potential and hampered evidence, rationally synthesizing frayed and untied ends, and single-handedly cracking the cerebral brain twisters that plague his existence.   Living the American dream in the suburbs of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with his attractive wife (Catherine Keener), and infant daughter, Tom leads a relatively reclusive lifestyle.

After cursorily completing an assignment for a Senator, Welles is summoned to the manor of a recently deceased captain of industry, Mr. Christian.  Greeted by his wheelchair-bound widow, Mrs. Christian (Carter), and an entourage of domestic servants and lawyers, Welles is directed into Mr. Christian's study.   Swiveling a tremendous painting of Mr. Christian hinged to the paneling behind the desk, a wall safe is unmasked in its wake.  Mrs. Christian's attorney explains that it had taken all day for safecrackers to decipher the combination, and that they were horrified with what they found concealed within its depths.   Digging through stocks, bonds, and other assets, the Christians' attorney recovers a reel of eight-millimeter film.  Mrs. Christian elucidates that the nature of the film is primarily pornographic, but culminates to the murder of a young girl.   Straddling the fence between butchery and macabre special effects, Welles is unconvinced that the girl was murdered, but promises Mrs. Christian that he will look into the authenticity of the quote unquote snuff film, and will search for the teenage girl in the catalogues of the Bureau of Missing Persons.

Printing several freeze-frames of the silent film, Welles departs for the archival library of missing persons.   Spending the better part of his afternoon thumbing through wallet-sized photographs of girls adhered to index cards, Welles begins nodding off, shocking himself back into consciousness with a mouthful of black coffee.   Surprising himself, he finds a girl who looks identical to the girl in the film.  Armed with the girl's former address, Welles drives to the derelict home of her mother.  Winning her confidence and faith, Welles begins questioning the mother.   Offering little to no information regarding the whereabouts of her daughter, he asks to use the bathroom.  He, instead, wanders throughout the rickety house and scours the girl's bedroom.   Finding nothing of any significance, Welles returns to the bathroom and begins dry heaving into the toilet.  Eyeing the back of the toilet, he removes the lid and finds a diary in a plastic sandwich bag.   Reading a few entries before tucking it away, Welles learns that she had a boyfriend whose father was the local mechanic.

Following the deceptive trail of breadcrumbs, Welles meets vis-à-vis with her boyfriend in the cafeteria of a juvenile detention center.   He divulges in a string of profane language that his girlfriend, Mary Ann Mathews (Jenny Powell), had run away to Hollywood for a better standard of living, hoping to become a movie star.   He says in a denigrating tone that it is more likely that she wound up stripping at a "titty bar."  That next morning, Welles is seen packing a suitcase with a week's worth of clothing, a 10-shot pistol, and surveillance equipment.   Once in Hollywood, Welles watches the "snuff" film again, printing a freeze-frame of the assailant, shrouded by a leather sato-masochistic mask.  Welles traipses into an adult bookstore, purchasing a stack of disparate kaleidoscopic magazines.  The clerk at the bookstore, Max California (Phoenix) , is acutely tuned-in and clear-headed, though he gives off the vibe that he is a smutty bottom feeder, reading Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" behind a sex novel.  Welles perceives the enlightened Max behind his lewd façade, and becomes the Dante to his Virgil, shadowing California as he journeys into the underbelly of the Red Light District.   In reference to the porn industry, California cautions, "There are some things that you see, and you can't 'unsee' them.  Know what I mean?   It can get to you."

As Welles and California descend into the depths of Hell-on-earth, tunneling deeper and deeper into the culture of underground pornography, the detective becomes more and more distant from his wife, forgetting to call and being elusive and cryptic when he does, as if tainted by the world in which he now walks.   Powerless to escape the inferno, Welles and California become tangled in the affairs of dangerous and suspect pornographers.

Andrew Kevin Walker, writer of "Se7en" and "8MM," once again designs a protagonist that cannot fathom the motives behind such an atrocity, such unadulterated evil.   Welles is assaulted by a terse explanation in the closing scene of the film.  The masked assailant, The Machine (Chris Bauer) smirks, "I wasn't beaten as a child.  I didn't hate my parents.  There's no mystery.  The things I do, I do them because I like them!   Because I want to!"  Offering no comfort, The Machine, in a twist of unnerving irony, much like John Doe in the final act of "Se7en," smiles at Welles as Welles skewers him.   Some of the dialogue bears repeating, as it lends to the quirkiness of some of the characters, and the craft of the writer.  Shot in the neck, Dino Velvet (Stormare) breaths, "This is wrong, something's wrong.   Oh, God, not like this.  I'm supposed to have something more cinematic."

Joel Schumacher has an affinity for tension-building and darkly surreal atmospheres, intensified by Robert Elswit's cinematography, offering up "8MM" as a perverse noir thriller with offbeat characters.   From Max California to The Machine, to the eccentric, crossbow-wielding porn tycoon, Dino Velvet, and his grotesque, deviant partner-in-crime, Eddie Poole (Gandolfini), the cast is artistically idiosyncratic and impeccably airtight.   Even Tom Welles is unprecedented and unparalleled as a character, "crossing the Rubicon" during the denouement of the film.  Evidencing the physical manifestation of his war torn, self-consuming psyche, Welles is unable to pull the trigger on one of the snuff filmmakers who has been tightly bound in the room where he butchered Mary Ann Mathews.   Retreating to his idling truck, Welles dials Mrs. Mathews' number and uses her as a muse to paint the walls with the pornographer's gray matter.  Mrs. Mathews begins to cry hysterically when she learns what has happened to her daughter, echoing, "I love her.  I love her," over and over into the mouthpiece of the phone.   Clenching the snout of his piece in his hand, he snaps the filmmaker's spine, and pistol-whips him to death.

With immaculate writing, skillfully crafted direction, entrancing photography, and sublime performances, there is only one more facet to consider before "8MM" can ascend to the plateau of great art.   Fortunately, this front was helmed by Mychael Danna, whose mournfully disjoined and memorably distinctive score is one for the history books, attributing character and temperament to the very climate of the film.

I would recommend this movie to anyone who can stomach graphic violence and perverse sexuality, as those are the only two complaints a viewer could muster.   I regard this film as great art as it proves itself on every conceivable horizon.