8mm

You can't prepare for where the truth will take you

8MM (EIGHT MILLIMETRE) (18)

D: Joel Schumacher

Columbia (Gavin Palone, Judy Hofflund & Joel Schumacher)

USA 🇺🇸 1999

119 mins

Thriller

W: Andrew Kevin Walker

DP: Robert Elswit

Ed: Mark Stevens

Mus: Mychael Danna

Nicolas Cage (Tom Welles), Joaquin Phoenix (Max California), James Gandolfini (Eddie Poole), Peter Stormare (Dino Velvet), Anthony Heald (Daniel Longdale), Catherine Keener (Amy Welles)

A huge disappointment from the writer of Se7en (qv). This exploitative thriller follows Nicolas Cage's histrionic detective investigating the authenticity of a snuff film and the shady characters behind its existence, all while being constantly bugged by his hysterical wife wailing down the phone at him every five minutes.

All the impact of the film is ruined with an unconvincing, unsatisfactory ending when it's revealed that the true villain is just an average Joe (who likes to play the music of Aphex Twin very loudly, like all nutters would).

The film would have been more powerful if the hamminess of the performances were reeled in and the investigation uncovered a deeper kind of corruption in the underground of suburbia in a way that David Lynch seems to relish when he tackles films on similar subjects.

4/10