Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

8MM Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson January 11, 2019

"Everybody's afraid of this script." These were the cautionary words Columbia's executive triumvirate gave to Joel Schumacher about directing Andrew Kevin Walker's script, 8MM. Amy Pascal, John Calley, and Lucy Fisher had approached various directors about the project but they all passed until a copy of the screenplay reached Schumacher. The UCLA grad was burned out and reeling from the reception of Batman & Robin (in more ways than one) but eager to tackle dead-serious material with a hard edge. As the versatile director recollects in a exclusive new interview, an Australian film critic had recommended Romper Stomper and its main star, Russell Crowe. Schumacher and Crowe discussed doing the film all hand-held and the Aussie had fresh ideas about approaching the role of a private eye searching for a teen runaway that apparently appeared in a snuff film. Columbia learned that Nicolas Cage was also available and interested, although the studio unsurprisingly wanted a more conventional narrative. Schumacher was enthusiastic about both actors and leaned on Calley to choose his star. Calley picked Cage to portray PI Tom Welles.

8MM begins in a lower middle-class suburb of Harrisburg, PA where Welles lives with his wife, Amy (Catherine Keener), and their baby daughter. Just as he's about to unwind from a recently completed assignment, Welles receives a rather urgent call from Mrs. Christian (Myra Carter), the widow of a wealthy industrial magnet. Mrs. Christian wants Welles to come to her palatial estate to inspect a cannister of eight-millimeter film that Mr. Welles's consigliere, Daniel Longdale (Anthony Heald), has uncovered from a safe hidden behind a large portrait of a gentleman (Mr. Christian?). Welles winces and grimaces as he watches this short film of an innocent-looking girl juxtaposed next to a burly, leather-clad man with a resin mask one would guess belongs to Hannibal. The girl seems to be brutally beaten and maybe left for dead. But is the snuff film completely authentic or a staged hoax? Mrs. Christian tasks Welles with establishing the identity of the girl, who made the film, and the man behind the mask.

Hollywood, here I come.

Cage delivers a very clinical and meticulous performance. He quickly gets to the national clearinghouse to search a database for runaways and missing persons. He goes coast to coast in order to track down the adult film studio that allegedly set this fetid production in motion. At an adult bookstore in LA, he meets a young clerk named Max California. Joaquin Phoenix received unanimous critical praise for this key role and I echo the chorus. It's a fully three-dimensional performance as Phoenix invests himself into a would-be musician who's a little raw and tough but has a sweet disposition. Max brings Welles into previously uncharted territory for the investigator: underground extreme porn with lots of S&M. Welles's trail eventually leads him to Eddie Poole (James Gandolfini), a "B" porn film producer. Does Poole know the girl and a man called "Machine"?

In an archival commentary included on this disc, Schumacher lamented that critics massacred 8MM when it opened in late February, 1999. (That's not altogether accurate as Roger Ebert and other popular critics gave it favorable marks.) In a well-written piece for the Austin American Statesman, Chris Garcia described it as a reworking of Paul Schrader's Hardcore, which I saw in one of my film studies courses. There's an analogous parallel between the father played by George C. Scott and the Cage character in 8MM. They're both trying to rescue female teens lost in the squalid underworld and trying to either salvage or preserve their daughters' futures.

8MM was mischaracterized as a needlessly violent, tasteless, sexploitation flick. Walker and Schumacher depict unspeakable domains that very much exist in society but are nonexistent in commercial cinema. Cage fully immerses himself in Tom Welles's shoes and makes his quest for social justice a highly personal vendetta. He begins as an honest and wholesome private eye, transforms into the vigilante of lawless places, and concludes as a scarred soldier willing to not only protect his family fort, but also give the girl and her mother poetic justice for their perpetrators' irredeemable sins.

8MM Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Schumacher has stated that DVD sales for 8MM "went through the roof" so it's hard to reckon why it finally reached Blu-ray in North America twenty years after its home video premiere. (Schumacher's thirteenth feature has been available in Australia on a BD-25 courtesy of Shock's Cinema Cult sublabel for over a year.) 8MM appears in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50, which has been encoded at an average video bitrate of 32000 kbps. Though Shout! Factory did not give 8MM a 4K scan, the print used looks rock solid with deep, harsh blacks. There's a little motion blur but no glaring image stability issues. The opening titles have dirt scattered throughout the frame but artifacts nearly go away entirely post-main titles. Daytime scenes in Miami and LA look especially bright compared to the dark and grimy look that Robert Elswit has given it. One critic who saw the release print appropriately called the interiors "dark cellars lit by bare bulbs." Jeffrey Westhoff, who wrote for the daily Northwest (IL) Herald, described the drained colors as "a harsh palette of gunmetal blue and battleship gray" (see Screenshot #s 4 and 8). Elswit often darkens the left and right sides of the frame, leaving only shafts of light on faces. Shout seems to have worked from the same negative that Columbia Tri-Star/Sony used for its original SD transfers but this isn't an upconvert and there are no MPEG artifacts.

Screenshots 1-22, 24, 26, 28, & 30 = 2018 Shout! Factory 2K Transfer
Screenshots 23, 25, 27, & 29 = 1999 Columbia TriStar SD Transfer

Shout! provides their usual twelve chapter markers for the two-hour feature. (Columbia's DVD had a generous twenty-eight scene selections.)

8MM Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout! has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround (3392 kbps, 24-bit) and a downmixed DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo (1509 kbps, 24-bit). The 5.1 mix has its share of pros and cons. The percussive, ethnic beats from composer Mychael Danna are well-balanced in the fronts and their most propulsive notes stand out in the rear channels. Danna wrote a bifurcated score alternating with Moroccan percussive instruments (to suggest Tom Welles's entry into completely foreign places) and traditional symphonic music played low-key to underscore lingering suspense. The dialogue, general ambience, and f/x is another story. Spoken words delivered while in close-up seem a bit too loud. It seems more of an encode and sampling issue than an ADR problem. Background noise is more limited and doesn't really have an aural presence. Chases and gunshot sounds are above-average but lack the range and crispness of action films from the mid- to late nineties.

The optional English SDH look to be accurately transcribed throughout.

8MM Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Joel Schumacher

• NEW 8MM in 35MM – An Interview with Producer/Director Joel Schumacher (21:08, 1080p)

• Vintage Behind-the-Scenes Featurette (5:07, upscaled to 1080i)

• Theatrical Trailer (2:35, upscaled to 1080i)

• TV Spots (1:04, upscaled to 1080i)

• Still Gallery (6:38, 1080i)

8MM Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Walker and Schumacher take viewers to some very dark places and the films that they produce. However repulsive the imagery, I couldn't turn away from the screen. 8mm boasts one of Schumacher's best-directed films as well as one of Cage's greatest performances. The new interview with Schumacher contains some stories hitherto untold in the commentary or in print interviews that I read. I listened to the commentary twice and it makes me want to beg Schumacher to record commentaries for several of his other films. Shout! Factory has done a fine job of mastering the image but the lossless 5.1 is inconsistent. While not a bonafide special edition, this comes HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to fans of director and lead but also to followers of that chameleon, Joaquin Phoenix. The film poses very challenging material to digest (not for faint of heart) but I felt rewarded by some great writing from Walker (Se7en).