I've been dying to see reviews for this movie... still waiting for more, cause well it's so close to the movie now, and we've heard so little... well I just want to hear more. So write away if ya can.... Here ya go...
I haven't read a review for 8MM yet and I saw it so I thought maybe you could use it.
The premise is known, so I'll just give a brief overview. Nicholas Cage is Tom Welles, a private investigator with a wife and an infant daughter. He lives in a nice house and is good at his job (he even went to Penn on a full academic scholarship). The movie starts slowly and then builds tremendously.
We see Welles at work. Then we see him raking his lawn and holding his daughter. He's a good man and a family man. Then things take off. He is asked to find out if a snuff film is real or not. A girl appears to be murdered on it, and a woman wants to know if it's real. Cage slowly pieces things together, first on his own, and then with a porn store clerk named Max California (Joaquin Phoenix).
Joel Schumacher has, in my opinion, redeemed himself for Batman and Robin. This is potent stuff. Not as jolting as Seven, but close. Almost as good, too. The ending is just as horrifying, but in a different way. The camerawork by Robert Elswit is excellent. Cage is terrific and Phoenix is really good.
The less you know going in the better. I had prepared myself for some really graphic stuff, and I was right. The film itself is short and not as bad as I had anticipated, but the rest of the film made up for that. This is not your typical Hollywood fare. There is no easy resolution and no fairy-tale ending. It is riveting.
hanna
