A review by Mike Shea Movie Rating: ( * · · · · ) DVD Rating: ( * * * * * )
8mm is a good movie to remind me that there are still some pretty bad movies being made. It is like a gift basket of cliche's including a twist on the buddy cop (lying detective and porn dealer team up to fight snuff films) and even a car chase although it is with only one car. We get a huge domestic subplot between our hero, the lying detective, and his wife, played by Catherine Keener of Being John Malkovich fame. Sure, the plot is as disturbing as you have heard, but there isn't near as much as there was in Seven, also by Joel Schumacher. The movie ends around the 1:20 mark but keeps going for another forty minutes with a lot of "If you call, we might not be here" remarks from his disgruntled wife. There is a nice grey area that the character falls into but it doesn't save the film. For half the movie we get computers that can't filter out men from women when checking for a missing person, then we some huge underground porn conspiracy after our hero, then we find James Gandolfini of the Sopranos running a hard core porn ring. The last 30 minutes or so are about the only redeeming thing just from the fact that it isn't cliche, but the rest of this movie should have been stuck on 8mm and burned. The DVD had an excellent soundtrack that took full use of all five channels for the background score. The picture was a 16x9 enhanced 2.35 to 1 transfer. There was a directors commentary and a making of featurette. Frankly, I was told to stay away from this movie and I should have listened.