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List Price: $14.94 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 41433
Released: November 22, 2005 |
| Our Price: $7.59 |
| Used Price: $2.87 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Academy Award® winner Nicolas Cage stars with Joaquin Phoenix and Catherine Keener in an electrifying thriller from the writer of Seven. Directed by Joel Schumacher (The Client, Batman Forever, A Time to Kill), this dramatic story follows one man's obsessive search for the truth about a six-year-old crime and his ultimate discovery of the truth about himself.
Description of 8MM:
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
8MM Reviews:
Thought Provoking 
2009-08-03 - The film is really rivetting and Nicolas Cage is very good as the Private Investigator who is bent upon finding the fate of the girl.
Hariharan Venkatesh
New Delhi
India
Beware Of Brutal Topic 
2009-07-05 - Wow, this is a tough subject but not as sordid a film as I figured it would be, although be warned the last 30 minutes are really rough in spots. Yet, despite the unpleasant nature of the story (making a "snuff film" - filming the killing of people) it's a riveting one, well-acted and doesn't overdo the violence. The characters in here are some of the most despicable you could find - killer and porn kings.
Even our hero here, played by Nicholas Cage, starts off as a clean-cut fairly straight dude, and changes for the worst, too. Joaquin Phoenix has a good line in here, with the prophetic statement, "The devil doesn't change; he changes you."
James Gandolfini and Peter Stormare play characters about as bad you'll ever find in a movie. This film is not, as they say, for all tastes. It will turn off a lot of people but it is interesting and good revenge story, if you like that sort of thing and know what you're in for before watching this.
Into The Abyss...
2008-10-29 - I am certainly NOT a Nicolas Cage fanatic, and I've never liked much of Joel Schumacher's work (especially his ultra-silly Batman sequels). However, I did find 8MM to be interesting as well as somewhat disturbing. Cage, as private investigator Tom Welles, must plumb the depths of human depravity and degradation in order to uncover the truth behind a snuff film. Though goofy in spots, I was pleased by most of the dialogue and action. Joaquine Phoenix is excellent as porn-shop worker, Max California. As a sort of tour-guide, he leads Welles down through deeper, ever darkening levels of illicit behavior, into an underground universe where anything goes. Peter Stormare (Fargo, Unknown) is his usual eeevil self as bondage-film auteur, and all around madman, Dino Velvet. James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano himself!) is a perfectly sleazy [...]-producer. 8MM is a quick trip into the dark recesses of extreme perversion, where only the demons dare to walk. For an american movie, it's (fairly) shocking...
Causes and consequences of nihilism
2007-12-13 - Cage and Schumacher examine in horrifying and brilliant detail what motivates people to do or become evil, what overcomes evil, and what evil does to the good, the naïve, and the ill-prepared. Yes, it could have been a little less ponderous and a little more compact, but that hardly is a blemish in this movie. If you're looking for cartoonish, stylized morality plays, go see a movie like "Fatal Attraction," cuz this ain't it. This movie has a theme more in common with "Rope" and a sick, moody grittiness worthy of "Seven." Speaking of those movies, this movie reeks with the consequences of the philosophy of hedonism and nihilism, but does not wallow in this philosophy but instead uses them as a foil for the primacy of justice and retribution, both of which are ultimately delivered in a fashion worthy of James Dickey.
I liked it
2007-09-05 - As always, I think in my own personal opinion that Nicholas Cage is an awesome actor. People may disagree, but that is why this is the Great USA...everyone is allowed to have an opinion.
As for the movie, when I first watched it, it wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. It was dark, and dealt with very sensitive subjects. I really liked it, all the same, and I would recommend this movie to anyone who has a strong stomach.
