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8MM
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Oftentimes, after I watch a film that is hard to take, in either a thought-provoking or an emotional
way, or sometimes a combination of the two, I’ll take a shower. As the warm water flows, it
relaxes me and I’m able to think clearer and gather my thoughts on what I have just watched. I
took that shower after watching 8MM, and although it did help me gather my thoughts, I did not
step into the hot water for that reason. I took that shower because the film made me feel dirty.
Don’t take that the wrong way, though. In fact, that is probably the highest complement I can pay
to this movie. It is disturbing, bordering on being sickening, but this is not pornography. This is
not an exploitative, meaningless film made only for shock value. And be warned: This is NOT a
pleasant film to watch.
Somewhat of a mixture of TAXI DRIVER and SE7EN (the latter was even written by the same
person who wrote 8MM, Andrew Kevin Walker), 8MM is a study of human evil and how this evil
pervades good, caring people, making them commit further evil acts. Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage,
proving once again that he is one of the most talented and versatile actors currently working in
Hollywood) is a private investigator who is called out to a rich, old woman’s home. Her husband
had just died, and in a safe he kept, she found a film which realistically depicts a young woman
being brutally murdered. She wants to be reassured that this is not an actual snuff film. Tom does
not believe it is, but takes the job investigating it anyway. His inquiry leads him into the world of
violent, twisted pornography. What he discovers is not only the evil of those involved with the
film, but also the evil within himself and his need to be saved from it.
Highlighted by the bleak, dark atmosphere created by Schumacher’s direction, there are many,
many scenes of horrifyingly brutal violence and graphic sex, including rape, that are impossible to
get out of your head. Yet they are overshadowed by moments where the dialogue is the most
powerful thing coming from the screen. One of these scenes has Welles just about to kill one of
the makers of the snuff film (James Gandolfini), but being unable to convince himself that it is the
right thing to do. He calls the mother of the murdered young girl to, in a way, ask for her
permission to deal out vigilante justice upon the man. He tries to moralize the evil he is about to
commit, and it makes for the most disturbing scene in the film.
We are never directly told that Tom’s actions are evil. He kills murderers, the type of perverted
people who barely qualify for being human. One of these men (Chris Bauer) even tells Tom that
he does what he does not because he was abused, raped, or hated his parents (he still lives with
his mother, who we only see for a few seconds, but we get a sense that she is a loving woman
who is unaware of her son’s appalling lifestyle). He says that he does what he does because he
enjoys it, shoving his evil into our faces one more time. The film asks us to contemplate its
material and decide for ourselves how we should view Tom’s actions, but I know that as the film
drew me deeper and deeper into itself, I found it harder and harder to care about any of the
characters at all. It gets to the point where I was just as disturbed by what Tom does as I was by
anything else the film had shown me.
One the surface, 8MM is an extreme and deeply disturbing look at the underworld of
pornography. In his review, Roger Ebert mentioned that were this not a big studio’s film, it would
have easily received an NC-17 rating instead of the R rating it received. It’s THAT extreme. But
as dirty as this film made me feel for its repulsive portrayal of human evil, I would like to say
again that this is NOT pornographic or exploitative. If you dig a little deeper below its surface,
you can see its troubling commentary on humanity.
My Rating: ****
Review by Jared Mills
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