Eight Millimeter: Amazon.ca: Nicolas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix, James Gandolfini, Peter Stormare, Anthony Heald, Chris Bauer, Catherine Keener, Myra Carter, Amy Morton, Jenny Powell, Anne Gee Byrd, Jack Betts, Robert Elswit, Joel Schumacher, Gavin Polone, Jeff Levine, Joseph M. Caracciolo, Judy Hofflund, Andrew Kevin Walker: DVD

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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 unsavory 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

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Customer Reviews

199 Reviews

5 star:		(62)
4 star:		(47)
3 star:		(30)
2 star:		(27)
1 star:		(33)

Average Customer Review

3.4 out of 5 stars (199 customer reviews)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Cage Was Astounding..., May 26 2004

By

David E. Graham (Ewing, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 8MM (Widescreen/Full Screen) (DVD)

This dark tale of the underworld of pornography,and the weirdos it entales, follows a private detective Tom Welles (Nick Cage) who was hired by the widow of a millionaire, to track down a girl who is in a supposed snuff film. Det. Welles is quickly taken into the depths of thie hellish lifestyle as things begin to unfold, Cage does his most remarkable performance since 1996 in "Face/Off." Cage had long ago shown the entertainment fans that he was a powerful actor but incase they forgot this film quickly reminds. WATCH THIS FILM

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5.0 out of 5 stars SNUFF SAID, May 10 2004

By

Michael Butts (Berkeley Springs, WV USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: 8MM (Widescreen/Full Screen) (DVD)

Granted this is certainly not a feel good kind of movie. Nor is its subject matter, which sad to say, does exist in our pristine world, but for some reason, audiences tend to find it repulsive and tend not to look at the film as an artistic endeavor. I think Joel Schumacher's direction is excellent; the one scene where Cage has broken into Machine's house and the record is stuck at the end is as frightening as anything I've seen in recent movies. He also draws excellent performances, not only in his leading cast, but in the supporting roles. Nicolas Cage, not one of my favorite actors, does an outstanding job in a role that is complex and multi-dimensional. His persistence to find who killed Maryanne Mathews is relentless and at times heart-shattering. James Gandolfini is superb and despicable in the role of the smut producer who helmed the snuff film. Peter Stomare as the heartless director Dino Velvet is likewise disgustingly realistic. Joaquin Phoenix provides a complex comic portrait who wants to join up with Cage in his quest. Anthony Heald as the Christian's lawyer is typical bar bull, and Catherine Keener, though stuffy and reserved, makes a good wife to the volatile Cage. However, to me, the most impact comes from the carefully controlled and subtly nuanced performance of Amy Morton as Maryanne's mother. Her desire to hold on to her daughter's reappearance; her loneliness in eating alone ("I'd like to eat once without the TV) and the lustful longing in her scenes with Cage are awesome. Her performance gives the movie its heart, and enables us to see why Cage acts like Charles Bronson at the end.
This could be called a "sick" movie, but we are a "sick" society. Old Mr. Christian did the snuff film because "he could", and Machine killed because he enjoyed it.
Ultimately, a disturbing but unusually good movie. Should have done better at the box office, but don't let its subject matter keep you from watching Amy Morton in an unheralded bit of brilliance.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Smut film expose, Oct 31 2003

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Vagabond77 (Tennessee, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 8MM (Widescreen/Full Screen) (DVD)

Joel Schumacher was panned horribly for the goofy "Batman and Robin", so he went to make "8mm", a decidedly more adult and bleaker movie. Nicolas Cage is Tom Wells, a private investigator hired to check out a snuff film, where a young girl seems to be savagly raped and the killed even more horribly. Many people didn't like the movie, and I can't blame them to be honest, but I liked the edgy and gritty subject matter, the seedy side of an already notorious pornography industry. I thought Cage did a good job as a smart man who falls deeper and deeper into the slimy underworld of vice. The end is a little too fronteer justice style for my taste, I would have liked to seen the culprets get arrested. Machine was an interesting charactor.

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Most recent customer reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars disturbing
I thought this movie was disturbing because of the film that Cage watches and the places he goes to find out the horrible truth. Read more

Published on Oct 13 2003 by Michael Bolts

4.0 out of 5 stars WHO SHOWED THIS BEFORE
I have seen this movie only once a long before but when I saw it
I thought WHO ELSE SHOWED THIS PROBLEM IN A MOVIE BEFORE? Read more

Published on July 27 2003