Last summer, I was slipped a copy of Andrew Kevin Walker's screenplay for 8MM. As someone who considers David Fincher's Se7en (also penned by Walker) one of the most important films of the 1990s, I couldn't resist parting the yellow covers of "eight millimeter" (its front-page spelling) and spoiling the eventual film that would come of it. What I read made it to the screen essentially intact, though 8MM is brought to you by Joel "Batman and Robin" Schumacher, a director not famed for his diligence.

Nicolas Cage stars as private detective Tom Welles, an educated husband and father summoned, in a classic Raymond Chandler set-up, to a stately manor one night by Mrs. Christian (Myra Carter), the wealthy widow of a steel investor. She felt at liberty to crack her late husband's secret safe, inside which sat a reel of 8mm film depicting a young woman's brutal murder. Mrs. Christian needs to know if this "snuff" film is the real thing; she hopes to preserve her husband's good name.

Welles' investigation brings him to the underbelly of Los Angeles. He learns the (possibly) snuffed woman's name and last known address. He also hooks up with a porn-shop employee swaggeringly named Max California (Joaquin Phoenix) to ascertain what sort of sickos would manufacture such depravity. For a considerable amount of dough, the intelligent and bored Max provides Welles with leads so sufficient they may just get both of them killed: the detective has stirred sleeping dogs in Eddie Poole (James Gandolfini), a hothead producer, Dino Velvet (an over-the-top Peter Stormare), a crossbow-wielding director, and rubber-masked Machine (Chris Bauer), a notorious star of S&M videos who lives for torture.

Because I have the unique critical perspective of having read the screenplay prior to seeing its celluloid counterpart, I cannot resist noting two crucial differences between the written word and the final cut. In Walker's 5/06/97 draft, Max delivers a powerful monologue regarding the desensitization experienced by hard-core porn watchers: he hypothesizes that the snuff film is the next logical evolutionary step for the industry. It's a disheartening speech, but one that (further) elevates 8MM beyond schlock. Schumacher chose to remove it for reasons unknown but not unexpected: it is, after all, not exposition, and therefore as useless as the human appendix in genre terms; clearly the attempt was to distill the Hardcore-inspired narrative to its purest psychological-thriller foundation. Walker also made clear that we never see Machine's face, but Schuamcher can't resist the urge to show baby-faced Bauer in mask-less close-up, thereby deflating the line, "You were expecting a monster?"

8MM is far from solid in other respects: Catherine Keener, unparalleled at portraying icy neurotics (most recently in Your Friends and Neighbors), is miscast as Cage's housewife, though it's nice to see her find work in studio pictures at last; the pacing is off--the first half could use tightening; and Max California's abrupt exit from the film feels like a directorial misstep.

Still, there is much to admire about the piece, particularly the Cimmerian lighting designs of cinematographer Robert Elswit and Canadian composer Mychael Danna's melancholy, sitar-laced score. Schumacher and his team have crafted a handful of stirring sequences; the film's best scene is shown briefly in the trailer: with only the clickety-clackety motor of the projector on the soundtrack, Welles sits in a blackened room, viewing a grainy, possibly faked murder of a teenage runaway, overcome by grief and terror. And we stare back at him, sharing in his revulsion.

Welles' inevitable vigilante rampage is another unbearably sad sight. (8MM is also, at times, unbearably suspenseful.) The politics of 8MM are, for better or worse, vaguely right-wing--its general attitude is reminiscent of Schumacher's other good picture, Falling Down--and un-hip, but Welles' politically-incorrect reactions to the shocking stimuli around him are sincere and identifiable. It's not that Welles becomes the ultimate Boy Scout--au contraire, he has a selfish need for justice, a futile, utterly human desire to "unsee" the horrors he has witnessed and cleanse his soul. (He starts out as Philip Marlowe and winds up as J.J. Gittes.) That being said, it all reads better than it plays.-Bill Chambers

Buy 8MM posters at Moviegoods (click on image)

Published: March, 1999