8MM: Hello Machine, Love Your Work

I think this might be one of the darkest Nic Cage movies so far.

Hard content warning on this one, folks. This is a movie that is pretty blunt and unforgiving in depictions and discussions of sexual violence.

Nicolas Cage plays Tom Welles, a private investigator who is hired by an old widow to find out if a snuff film she found in her late husband’s safe is real or not. As he digs deeper and deeper into the case, he discovers a ring of illegal pornography and the dangerous people who run it. Unable to keep himself separated from the case, Cage becomes more and more personally attached to the victim as he uncovers what has happened to her.

This movie is fucking visceral. It’s not nauseating or upsetting in the same way that Wild at Heart was, and it’s not as soul-shattering and shocking as Joe was, but the content and the concept is one of the darkest I’ve seen in a crime thriller. It’s incredibly difficult to believe that this movie was released only two years after director Joel Schumacher’s previous project; Batman & Robin.

There are some cheap laughs here and there, provided by a young, blue-haired Joaquin Phoenix, but Cage is stoically grim this entire movie. And I think it brings an incredible level of gravitas to a movie that deals with very sensitive topics.

Watching Cage shift from detached PI to obsessive detective to revenge seeking killer is fascinating and feels surprisingly natural. There are moments where you know that a large character change has happened in that instant, but there is a long game at play here too, where Cage’s character shifts slightly and nearly unnoticed as the film progresses.

When he finally exacts his cruel justice upon the criminals, you cheer for him because you know what he knows, and what he experienced, and you almost lose yourself in the adrenaline until he collapses into his wife’s lap, weeping and vulnerable. Cage is known for his high-intensity performances, and this hard shift from enraged vengeance seeker to scared, heartbroken, terrified man who loves his family more than anything is astonishing.

Even in the last shot, as Nicolas Cage looks back at his family, smiling, you can see an incredible sadness and fear in his eyes. He knows what the world is capable of. He has danced with the Devil.

8MM hits a solid and poetic eight Cagemarks

Shirtlessness: Yeah you know it baby.

Shaving: Sadly not, but he is clean shaven this whole film

Cage Scream: Oh yeah, Cage is super frustrated by the end of this movie.

Overacting: At one point the bad guys handcuff him to a bed and he just loses his shit. It’s glorious.

Underacting: Okay this might be my all-time favourite example of Cage’s underacting. At the beginning of the movie, he watches the snuff film, and then hilariously casually explains to this 80+ year old woman that it’s “probably just a hard S&M film, you know, simulated rape.” It’s such a weird line to deliver so bluntly and casually, and there’s just absolutely no tact.

Weird Dialogue: There’s a few points where he’s talking to people over the payphone, but all you hear is Nicolas Cage talking and the pacing is super strange but the lines are all like “Yeah. No. I got this. You can count on me.” and it’s so bizarrely stiff and generic.

Running: Nicolas Cage is really fast.

Kissing: Nic Cage bones down in this one.

8MM is a dark, gritty film that frequently borders on the melodramatic. It’s a bizarre portrayal of the pornography industry and the secret pornography black market in a time before the internet, and there are a lot of scenes in sex dungeons and clubs that feel like they might have reused sets from Batman Forever.

All that being said, Nicolas Cage does an excellent job and brings an astonishing amount of seriousness to a film that could otherwise have been played as ostentatious or preachy in its heaviness.

May you always not smoke,

Nat

P.S. lil baby Norman Reedus makes an appearance in this!