Rating: 

The Info

Directed by: Stephan Elliott
Written by: Stephan Elliott (novel by Marc Behm)
Starring: Ewan MacGregor, Ashley Judd, Patrick Bergin, k.d. lang, Jason Priestley, Genevieve Bujold
Produced by: Nicolas Clermont, Tony Smith

The Nutshell

A private detective becomes obsessed with a murderess and becomes her guardian angel.

The Review

    Eye of the Beholder is a fascinating look at obsession and the desperation that can fill the lives of those who have lost everything. Eye of the Beholder is also a poorly edited, confusing mess with anachronistic problems and a lack of adequate narrative. Writer/director Stephan Elliott (Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert) has taken a story with much promise and squandered it, making this film one of many disappointments of the new millennium.

    The film begins on a playful note, as a man appears to be preparing to assassinate someone across the street. The rifle turns out to be a high-powered digital camera, and the assassin a private detective called The Eye (MacGregor), who is about to humiliate his victim. The Eye is a lonely man who communicates via modem to a woman named Hilary (Lang), who passes him assignments and happy banter. The confusion begins quickly when you can't quite grasp who the Eye works for; is he just a detective, or does he work for an ultra-secret agency of some sort? His employer's office comes equipped with voice-recognition passwords out of True Lies and The Eye enjoys an apparent immunity from the lesser parts of the law (parking, etc.). He is handed the task of tailing his bosses' son, which leads him to meet a bombshell with a murderous streak named Joanna (Judd). He becomes obsessed with her and follows her from city to city as she changes identities and wigs constantly.

    The Eye associates Joanna with his daughter, taken away from him long ago because of his job. This causes him some emotional unrest and a possible loss of sanity. This is one aspect of Beholder that is intriguing, the way that the Eye's state of mind is not perfectly clear. He does a fine job of following Joanna into each city, though the fact that she never notices him as he sits nearby in restaurants, airports and trains is a stretch. The Eye's intentions are a mystery until the end, a fact that may unnerve some viewers and enchant others.

    The film's strengths are mostly in its style. A loud, driving score by Marius De Vries helps propel many scenes and keep our interests high, and many fade-outs act as segues to new cities and times. The problem is that the film crew, from costume designers onwards have not thought things out enough. The Eye follows Joanna for more than a year, though exactly how long is, as with most other facts in this film, unknown. Joanna says that she has been in one city "for a few months" and is in another long enough to become engaged. Yet in every scene, The Eye is wearing the same clothes. His hair never changes length, and when he checks in with Hilary after many months, she does not seem too stressed out over his disappearance. Various other problems appear, like a car crashing on the side of a road but then somehow appearing in the middle of a frozen lake. These details, when added up, make this little better than a college production.

    Eye of the Beholder is mildly entertaining cinema until the appearance of Jason Priestley as a drug addict who spends a night with Joanna. Priestley, obviously trying to ditch his Beverly Hill 90210 image, takes on his violent, druggy role with gusto. Priestley is not a good actor, and he hams his way through a scene in which one person gets shot with heroin, while another gets his face smashed apart in a fight. It is a glorification of violence and is an unfortunate anomaly in an otherwise subtle film. The great Genevieve Bujold makes an appearance as a parole officer who befriends jailed young women and teaches them to survive. Bujold is an actress who does not appear in enough films for my money, bringing a confident presence to great films like Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, and to this much lesser work. Judd provides her character with a violent survival instinct, while occasionally hinting at a deep-rooted vulnerability. MacGregor makes The Eye an interesting character, if only because it is so hard to figure him out.

    Eye of the Beholder has a little bit of the great psychological thrillers of the past in it. The lack of straightforward answers helps keep an interested viewer thinking, wondering what The Eye will do if he ever comes face to face with Joanna, and how Joanna will get out of each situation she lands herself in. Ultimately though, there are simply too many amateurish problems with the production. Much like last year's Ravenous, in which white cloth was substituted for snow in certain scenes, mistakes and oversights sink the film. When the gratuitous violence wrought by Jason Priestley is factored in, Eye of the Beholder is a disappointment.

Copyright - Tim Chandler

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