Within a few blocks of any given point in America lies a grotesque underbelly of exploitation, corruption and evil; a burgeoning cancerous growth deeply rooted in the subconscious; a black-market of perverse carnality seething beneath the surface of our culture.

According to Nicolas Cage, who plays private investigator Tom Welles, “‘8MM’ is “a journey film, a descent into hell, except we’re not in the jungle, we’re in our own backyard. This is happening all around us, at any given time.”

Cage plays a detective hired by Mrs. Christian (Myra Carter), a wealthy elderly woman whose husband has recently died. Amongst her husband’s effects, locked away in a safe, is a roll of eight millimeter film stock. The film appears to show the bizarre murder of a young girl at the hands of a leather-clad man with a star tattoo on his hand.

Mrs. Christian wants one thing from Welles: to determine if the film is real or simply a clever fake. With virtually no information to go on, Welles begins a search that leads him to the girl’s mother and her diary.

The scenes with Cage and Amy Morton (who plays the mother of the apparently murdered girl) are some of the most emotionally compelling in the film. It is during these scenes that Welles goes from simply fulfilling an obligation to a client to having a personal interest in discovering the truth about Mary Anne Mathews.

From there the “descent into hell” truly begins.

First stop: Los Angeles.

Here, Cage meets up with Max California (Joaquin Phoenix), a young porno store attendant with an eye for the classics that he hides behind pornographic book covers. California acts as a guide for Welles, giving him an introduction to the world of pornography, which goes beyond the local dirty bookstore.

In order to find Mathews, Welles begins looking for a source for the elusive “snuff” film, long considered to be an urban legend. Wells finds out repeatedly that this an item which even the hard-core, black market pornographers dealing in bestiality and children find objectionable.

Eventually, Welles and California track down the director of the film, Dino Velvet (Peter Stormare), who gives a disturbing performance as an avante garde porno film director. The trail ends in New York with a brief backtrack to L.A. for one of the more expository scenes in the film.

Without giving away any vital details, Cage’s character goes on a search for a missing girl but eventually discovers the depths to which a man can conveniently sink. One of the defining lines in the film was from California, who said, “When you dance with the devil, the devil doesn’t change — you do.”

Cage’s character is a man of virtue whose greatest vice is lying to his wife about his smoking problem. He’s neither an icon of virtue nor a man accustomed to the depravity he encounters.

Cage gives a modestly impressive performance due the nature of his character to maintain control. Near the film’s conclusion, Cage kicks it into overdrive as he struggles with a moral dilemma which brings the film dangerously close to falling into a routine.

However, Cage manages to pull up from a dangerous nose dive and gives the audience a genuine and believable performance which is impressive without preaching to the audience about the evils of porno.

One could not help but be disturbed by the images of realistic acts of sado-masochism being performed on screen. At times it would have been easy to believe the audience was being presented with edited versions of real films.

The film is directed by Joel Schumacher, whose deft touch basically killed the “Batman” series of films. Schumacher didn’t screw up this one, though — he managed to capture the darkness of L.A. and New York and the light in Tome Welles equally.

For a walk on the dark side which manages to be as entertaining as it is disturbing, “8MM” is one of the best films of its kind since “Seven,” which should come as no surprise since Andrew Kevin Walker wrote both screenplays.

There is more here than salaciousness and sex; there are carefully crafted characters and compelling emotions which will keep you riveted and dying to know “What happened to Mary Ann?”

4 stars out of five

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs.