In association with

8MM [1999]
from Uca
starring Nicolas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix, James Gandolfini, Peter Stormare, Anthony Heald
directed by Joel Schumacher

Features:

• Dubbed
• PAL
• Widescreen

Editorial Review:

This thoroughly unpleasant thriller from the hands of Joel Schumacher (Batman and Robin) offers very little in its lurid tour of snuff films and the seedy pornographic underworld. A wooden Nicolas Cage stars as a private detective hired by a tycoon's widow, who discovers in her dead husband's safe some 8mm footage of a young girl being sexually abused and slaughtered. Cage's job is to determine the veracity of the film and to find out the girl's identity, whether she be alive or dead. What could have been a taut, nerve-jangling thriller is instead a lumbering, overwrought but underwritten tale of vigilante justice. Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker also penned the imaginative and compelling Seven but you wouldn't know it from this tired and monotonous script. Schumacher tries for echoes of both The Silence of the Lambs and Paul Schrader's Hardcore (which stars George C. Scott as a father trying to find his daughter in the seedy porn industry) but despite some slick camerawork, the film fails to draw the audience into either the mystery of the missing girl or Cage's supposed internal conflicts. It's not so much the unsavoury subject matter as it is the sloppy and unimaginative filmmaking that makes the movie unbearable. Of the entire cast only Joaquin Phoenix, as a charismatic goth boy who works at an adult book store, comes away with a memorable performance. --Mark Englehart

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0

• Very Good Easy Watching Thriller
  I love dark movies and this was definately dark. Cage plays a private detective who is hired by a rich women, who finds a movie owned by her dead husband, which shows a girl being brutely killed. she asks Cage to find out if the moive is real or not. Through the course of the movie Cage's character is dragged further into the world of XXX porn industry, and is helped along the way by Max (Phonix(who is amazing in it))
  Cage is dragged into the "world" and is forced to make a choices that will... more info

• Go to bed 2 hours earlier, your dreams will be more entertaining
  I can't believe I've seen this film twice and I had forgotten how pointless and benign it was. If it's classified as a thriller, forget it - there are no thrills. A mystery? Well, I suppose so but not one that I was that bothered about solving. Then there's the drama element, and the characterisation, which is where it really falls flat on its face. After a promising start, with Cage giving a possibly deliberately wooden performance as a straight-down-the-line, highly respected private investigator, he's... more info

• Does not deserved the slating it is getting here
  Having read the negative reviews, I am quite surprised.
  This is a workmanlike mystery where we see how with determnation and bluff, Cage's character puts all the pieces together.
  So there was a Hollywood ending- it was made in Hollywood. So Cage was affected by the case - he has seen it from everyone's point of view.
  If you have no interest or even revulsion in the US porn industry then you will be put off by this film, there is no doubt. However we must confront darkness to fully appreciate... more info

• a good film
  8mm is a film that deals with the taboo of snuff movies,is such a thing feigned or is it a real industry,most of us will never know,this film deals with a detective played by cage assigned to find out if a snuff movie found in a deceased mans vault by his wife is real or not,so the events that follow lead cage into an underground world and indeeed movement that is seldom pretty viewing.
  The film doesnt offer much in terms of moral,and while the ending is predictable enough,the journey there is twisted... more info

Similar Products:

More from Amazon