8 mm

Here's Nick Cage at the beach. Then here's Nick at the airport. Cut to Nick with his loving wife. A small touch of obligatory sex. A Glimpse of the Cage chest. Cue onto the set his adorable baby.

One, two three, Here's Nick to see.

And who's Nick? He's a loving, husband and father. He's Nick Cage the conservative. He's a humble private investigator just trying to make a living in amongst the trash that is his stock and trade. But he's a pretty wimpy P.I.

That's all well and good but more than most, 8mm seems to go by the storybook. Such an effort is made to establish the worthiness of Tom Welles (Nick Cage) and the nastiness of the porn industry with whom Tom has to deal, that all semblance of movie magic disappears.

This may have something to do with the subject matter, which is snuff movies; those home videos said to show actual murder.

The Moral Majority in mainstream America might have had something to do with the tone of 8mm.

I got the feeling that veteran film maker Joel Schumacher (Falling Down, A Time To Kill, Batman And Robin, Dying Young, Flatliners, The Lost Boys) might have been a bit overawed by the material, but then with his experience, you would have hoped that he could have been a bit more inventive.

In fact 8mm has something of the opposite effect, seeming to be more sleazy than the material it's supposed to be denigrating.

But then that's the nature of film. It augments and glorifies whatever it regards.

And that has a lot to do with the music. In 8mm the music has a decidedly Arabic flair and Arabic music is played over the end titles.

I would argue that there's a clear and unfortunate inference that it's the Arabs who are involved in snuff movies, augmented by the fact that one of the chief pornographers is of middle Eastern extraction, played with some zest by Peter Stormare.

Next year I suppose the villains will be played by actors made out to be Serbian, depending on who wins the war!

But then back to Nicholas Cage, who played Tom Welles so monochromatically that Tom seemed like an eternally doleful Basset Hound. There are only so many minutes that I can happily watch an actor never change his expression or demeanor.

Oh he goes a bit frantic at the end but by that time I was bored. I found myself wishing for a Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart as Tom, either of whom would have added some much needed depth and humour to the film, but there I am again probably showing my age.

But another of the myriad qualities needed for a good film is credibility. We're meant to believe that Tom is a sleuth; chiefly a chaser of adulterous partners.