the story ended with cage sobbing to his wife, saying, save me. i can't decide which one is better, this film or seven (1995) in which both were written by andrew kevin walker. there are so many evils out there that just can not be explained by bad childhood or mental illness, and it manifests itself purely because people can do it. cage's character, private investigator tom welles thought he had seen everything there is to be seen - until he is called by a rich client to handle a case of snuff film that possibly involved a girl being murdered. sick stuff really, old rich men jerking off to simulated rape porn - so he spends a long time trying to understand why people do it. he is too ordinary for this sort of sick pleasures people indulge, he has a wife and a baby and a house with white picket fences. when confronted with the girl's killers, he can't bring himself to kill them. he had to call the girl's mother and asked for her permission. he can't imagine anyone doing this out of sheer pleasure, or just because they can. he has good reasons to kill those men and he still can't do it.
great performances by nicolas cage, joaquin phoenix and peter stormare. stormare is dangerous as the pornographer who takes private commissions and has no qualms about sacrificing people for money. he meant it when he said, "if there was no honor among perverts and pornographers, the whole fucking business would fall apart."
i like film noir in whatever forms they come. the slow investigative steps that moved you along the path of destruction, forcing you to face people doomed in a place that has no return. there is a lot of indecency going on underneath that surface of pretentious wealth and civilization.
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