PORNOGRAPHERS

Oh, what it must be like to see the world through the eyes of Andrew Kevin Walker. Imagine a seedy city, stewing in its own corruption, the heavy blackness of night not only covering the buildings and street but also the human soul. A layer of grit and filth permeating everything, even the skin of the inhabitants unfortunate enough to be living there. The city conceived as a concentration of misery and suffering in its purest form--when people die, they die violently and horribly. Good is corrupted, and evil abounds. There is no redemption. There are no happy endings. It is an incredibly dark vision but one that is undoubtedly held be Walker, the former Tower Records clerk-turned-angst-ridden-screen- writer, who must have kept of a copy of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan handy when he sat down to write his first film, Seven, and his new one, 8MM. Both films share an incredibly bleak outlook of the human condition, and while these visions are certainly helped by the director, their essence lies with Walker, who with just two screenplays has established himself as Hollywood's most brutally pessimistic screenwriter.

8MM is a dark, savage thriller that goes for the jugular and attempts to show the staggering level of atrocity of which humanity is capable. The central character is Tom Wells (Nicolas Cage), a highly trained private investigator who handles the dirt of the rich and famous. At the beginning, we sec Wells working a surveillance case for a senator before he's called to the home of Mrs. Christian (Myra Carter), the well--endowed widow of a recently deceased industrial tycoon. Rich folk always seem to have eccentric little possessions, and Mr. Christian left behind a humdinger in his safe--an eight millimeter film that shows a teenage girl being brutally murdered. Mrs. Christian wants Wells to determine whether the film is an elaborate fake or a piece of "snuff"--the urban legend term for films that show actual murders. Wells agrees to take the case, and his investigation pulls him into the twisted underworld of hard-core pornography and bondage films. He soon discovers the hard way that it's a world that's easy to enter but not so easy to escape. As he's told by Max (Joaquin Phoenix), an intelligent porn store clerk who serves as the obligatory sidekick, "When you dance with the devil, the devil don't change. The devil changes you."

Nicolas Cage is one great chameleon of an actor, and this can mainly be credited to his eyes--those large, lidless, doe-like numbers that can be used for the most yearning, soulful stare (Leaving Las Vegas, City of Angels) or hardened into a psychotic glare (Face/Off, Snake Eyes). Cage, a ritualistically intense actor, has a penchant for going over the top, but in 8MM he adeptly handles the scope of his emotions. Initially playing Wells as a tightly coiled individual, Cage lets his rage build slowly, finally allowing it to boil over as the horrors he witnesses become too much to bear. When he finally breaks, staring at his battered face in the mirror and muttering "It's gonna be okay," the emotional display is all the more frightening.

Cage looks good on screen, dressed completely in black with a cigarette jutting out the side of his mouth, and his controlled presence is one reason why 8MM is such a strong, gripping thriller. The great strength of Walker's script is the way it plays on the viewer's emotions more and more as the story unfolds. When first viewed, the events on the eight millimeter film are shocking in their barbarity but not emotionally overwhelming because the girl is just a face with no identity. But as the plot develops, the viewer learns of the girl's past, her family and the remorseless nature of the men who used her and the audience thus forms an emotional investment in the picture and is forced to confront the same moral issues that Wells grapples with. Still, 8MM is a clear cut below Seven, the film it's most obviously trying to emulate. The reason why Seven left such an indelible impression was that, for all its horrors, there was an artfulness to its perversity, a frightening logic to its atrocities. 8MM, on the other hand, is much more coarse and unrefined in its actions, thrilling certainly but lacking a lyrical approach to its lewd subject.

Perhaps the individual who most comes out on top in 8MM is road-weary director Joel Schumacher, who puts together his most focused and polished directing job in years, dating back to a time before he started doing ponderous John Grisham adaptations and over-glitzy Batman flicks. As David Fincher did with Seven, Schumacher drenches his film with atmospheric feeling, turning darkness into its own entity. He is able to make the most simple of scenes, such as walking through an airport, appear ominous, and he uses the steady hum of the eight millimeter projector to create a sense of gnawing claustrophobia. Still, Schumacher was clearly influenced by Fincher, whose chilling directorial methods and artistic flair are better suited to such gritty material. As for Walker, his unflinching style remains as unnerving as ever, but he still has room to grow as a writer. There are several instances where his plot twists and character motivations are slack and lazily conceived, and there is a point near the end where 8MM nearly veers into ludicrousness. Still, as crass as it may be, 8MM is a high-octane thriller with an unwavering level of intensity that is nothing short of admirable. There are certainly going to be viewers who will be appalled by 8MM, and anyone who disliked Seven should steer clear of it. Even those who really like it may feel compelled to scrub their eyes with soap afterwards. But keep in mind what Morgan Freeman says at the end of Seven: "Ernest Hemingway once said 'The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part." Courtesy of Columbia Pictures DIRTY MINDS: "No, I won't be a surrogate mother for your triplets!"