The idea of a snuff film being the central focus of a movie, as in 8mm, certainly caught my attention. If you're not up on your porn, a snuff film is a pornographic film in which the death of an individual, usually a woman, is graphically depicted. They're urban legends, not real, because, hey, murder's kind of illegal.

Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage), a private investigator, is hired to discover the truth behind a snuff film found by the widow of one of Pennsylvania's most prominent, powerful men, identified only as Mr. Christian. The sweet Mrs. Christian (Myra Carter), is desperate to know who the poor girl on the eight-millimeter film was, if she was actually killed, and why her husband would have such a thing. Mrs. Christian sends Welles off with a seemingly unlimited cash flow to find out what happened to this girl (as if you couldn't tell by watching the eight-millimeter film, duh).

Welles, hired for his "discretion" (which we find out later has nothing to do with his hiring), makes some brilliant (read: impossible) discoveries. He somehow manages to find a picture of this girl on file at the Bureau of Missing Children Killed in Snuff Films, and pays a visit to her mother. By a stroke of genius, Welles decides to look in the water tank of an overly-disgusting toilet, and finds the girl's diary, complete with a note, which reads that she ran off to Hollywood to be a movie star. We can only guess what's coming out of this: young girl, Hollywood, movie star, you're not so stupid you can't put it all together.

Of course, the first place that Welles looks when he arrives in Hollywood is the red light district (cuz he's oh so smart). He scours strip joints, sex shops (where he meets the saving grace of the film, Max California, played by Joaquin Phoenix), and ends up at a Catholic boarding house. Just by coincidence, Mary Ann Matthews (the dead girl) had stayed there. Oddly enough, she just disappeared one day. Hmmm ... Welles takes her suitcase with him, rummages through, and finds the phone number of porn producer Eddie Poole (James Gandolfini).Welles confronts Poole, who denies knowing the girl. Max, an intelligent, aspiring musician and part-time sin merchant, quickly becomes Welles' right hand. Max is the (intentional) humor of the film. He quips at Welles's overly serious comments, which lightens the mood of this overly serious film. He also gets one of the cheesiest lines: "You dance with the devil, the devil doesn't change. The devil changes you." (This is evidenced by Max's blue hair and eyebrow ring. Be careful, it could happen to you too.)

Welles calls Poole and informs him, "I know you killed her. And now you're fucked." (Cage has always been able to say a great "fuck" when he needs to.) Poole phones his friend-in-sin Dino Velvet (Peter Stomare). Velvet is revered in the porn industry for his great S&M films. Max and Welles somehow manage an appointment with Velvet, and commission him to make a film, complete with Machine (Christopher Bauer), the murderer in the leather-mask with zipper (ooh, baby!). In a rapid yet painfully slow sequence of events at the set of the porn film, Mrs. Christian's lawyer, Longdale, reveals that he's in cahoots with Velvet and Poole; Max, Longdale, and Velvet are killed, Machine is stabbed, Welles gets the shit beaten out of him, the eight-millimeter film is destroyed, and Welles drives away really fast.

"Uh, what the hell just happened to the plot?"

"Plot? Oh, the plot. Umm ..."

It's about this point in the film, once he knows the truth, that Welles gets all vigilante and vows revenge. After his wife threatens to divorce him, and after Mrs. Christian kills herself when she learns the truth, Welles decides that he's "the only one who can finish this." He heads out to L.A. and kills Poole (sets him and his smut on fire, even). He then jets back to New York City. After the establishing shot of Machine's room (two Danzig posters and a sticker, wow, this guy must be evil), Welles finds Machine in his mask. They fight, Machine puts on his nerdy glasses and spews forth some crap about how he was never abused, never molested, he just "likes" to beat and kill people, he's normal like everyone else (all he needs is a skull in his hand, like Hamlet), and, guess what, Machine is killed. Go figure.

"What's more twisted than a snuff film?"

"Uh ... someone obsessed with the making of a snuff film?"

Yeah. Or at least that's what Andrew Walker, writer of Seven, wants you to think. With 8mm, Walker is again trying to show the psychology of a murderer, or something like that. Where Seven succeeds, 8mm fails. We're supposed to be looking at the seedy underbelly of the pornography industry and the effect it has on people, looking into the heads of murderers and sympathizing with the newly made vigilante Nicolas Cage, who has the permanent, disgusted expression of "Awwwwwwwwww ... Ohhhhhhhhhhhh" on his face. It doesn't happen. What happens is that 8mm quickly degrades into an unbelievable action movie, with Cage kickin' some ass, shootin' some guns, stabbin' some people and drivin' really fast. Ridiculous and contrived soliloquies, like Machine's, attempt to explain an act as horrific as homicide. We witness average family man Tom Welles' growing obsession and preoccupation with Mary Ann Matthews, pornography, murder, and revenge. But the transition from doing his job into the obsessive downward spiral isn't believable; it happens so quickly, you could miss it if you leaned over to make a smart-ass comment to your friend. Maybe it was an indication of the movie's quality that the director is Joel Schumacher. While Schumacher has a history of good films (The Client and Falling Down for example), his most recent projects include Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. But I overlooked that and told myself "It's the writer of Seven, it can't be bad." And I quickly discovered that I had been lying to myself. Walker was trying, in vain, to top the brilliance of Seven. That's why 8mm didn't come out well. In addition to the oft-times silly plot, the artistic quality was also missing.

It's a shame, too. There was such potential for this film. The premise was unique and offered a myriad of possibilities for development. A snuff film, a real-life snuff film, that's something to work with. A man's growing obsession with revenge. Three men's heartless, sociopathic ability to hurt or kill another human being. The evils of pornography. Dirty secrets of the rich and powerful.

Schumacher's directing doesn't improve on a weak, preachy script. Cage's acting is unbelievable and unreal. Development of the other characters is also lacking, to say the least. The inclusion of cliché after cliché (ooh, I'm gonna cock my gun! Look, I did it! I'll shoot you, I swear!) serves no purpose other than to appeal to the average moviegoer who's uninterested in an intellectual discussion of deep psychological and sociological issues. While not a complete failure, 8mm is definitely a disappointment.