This is a very brilliant, and very dark, action thriller. It has everything a private eye film should have: A daring detective, a wheelchair ridden old widow with money, a couple of low-life thugs, a dead girl, a mysterious film, and even a monstrous villain in a leather mask. There are mansions, gritty neighborhoods, gunfights, car chases, and some honest to goodness gumshoe style detective work. What more could you ask for in a movie?
Nicholas Cage plays Tom Welles, a private investigator who makes a pretty decent living by snooping around for the richer classes and keeping a lid on their dirty little secrets. Early in the film he’s summoned to the home of Mrs. Christian (Myra Carter) a very old, wheelchair ridden, widow. Her richer-than-dirt husband has recently passed away, and while going through his things she came across an 8MM film reel which was kept locked in his private safe.
The movie depicts an S&M themed murder, right on film. A fiendish man wearing a leather mask toys around with a knife, while a helpless looking young girl sits on the edge of a ratty looking bed. The whole set is covered in plastic sheeting- and it looks like it was shot in a dirty warehouse. The guy in the mask stabs the girl several times before the film simply stops. Mrs. Christian is unsure whether the scene is staged (fake blood, fake actors etc) or if the film is documenting a real murder of some poor girl. She hires Cage to investigate whether the film is genuine or a hoax.
The case takes our hero to Cleveland, Los Angeles, and New York.
I liked this film for a few different reasons. First, it doesn’t adhere to the usual private eye cliche’s. Tom Welles isn’t some fedora donning deadbeat with a crummy office, a string of floozies, and an alcohol problem. Rather he is a little better than middle class, he has a wife and son at home, and he dresses and talks like a professional man. Second, the case doesn’t get solved by some genius of his. It shows the legwork that goes into figuring the case out. We all know from the get-go that the film is probably the real deal, but the only lead in the case is the girl.
He goes through the paces of finding out who she is, visiting her home, talking to people (some dead ends), searching her room, etc. The detective actually follows the clues where they lead instead of having things dropped on his lap from some ‘informant’, which happens in so many detective stories it’s not funny.
I also liked the bad guys in this movie. Really, we’re talking about snuff films- porno. The guys he bumps into aren’t glamourous. The whole world he travels into is dark and gritty. Halfway through the film you just want to go take a shower to wash off the nastiness that seeps through your TV during this whole ordeal. There aren’t a lot of nasty or ‘x-rated’ scenes, but the cinematography is enough to make you feel a little dirty.
Good mystery, great plot, a couple of fantastic thugs. the action and drama was top notch. The ending was a little….strange in my opinion and leaves the viewer feeling somewhat empty, but not exactly in a bad way. I won’t ruin the flick by giving away the ending.
Definitely something to watch once, and then spend the next week trying to forget.