I hate films like this (Eye Of The Beholder (DVD))

Member Name: dave27

Product:	Eye Of The Beholder (DVD)
Date:	27/02/02 (24 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some nice touches

Disadvantages: McGregor

When Stephen Elliott made Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in 1994, it looked like he had a long and inspiring future in front of him. That was a surprise hit which has sustained enormous popularity and acclaim through the intervening years - it was witty and inventive and extremely funny.

However, if Eye of the Beholder is anything to go by, it looks like Mr Elliott has only one burning star in his firmament and will spend the rest of his days churning out pretty dull films.

Now perhaps I'm being a touch on the unfair side because a large part of the reason why I don't much like this film is Ewan McGregor. The megastar was pretty damn wonderful in his tour de force vehicle Trainspotting, but frankly I can't remember him doing anything else before or since of any real worth. Indeed, to my mind McGregor is normally the worst thing about all the films in which he appears. I don't know exactly what it is ... perhaps it's his apologetic, weak kneed performances, or maybe his lack of any expression other than eternally worried, dunno, quite frankly. Anyways, whether McGregor is playing Obi Won Kenobi or Nick Leeson or the dullard in Little Voice, he's just so drab and undeserving of any sympathy.

There's frankly no change here and McGregor as a British intelligence agent, codename Eye, hence the title, ranks alongside all those other limp skeletons in the cupboard.

However, it's not just McGregor, it's the bizarre nature of this film, the leaden pace, the lack of any passion or intelligence, the bloody shallowness of everything on show which really drags me down. Ashley Judd as an easy on the eye serial killer may make pleasant eye candy especially when she gets her kit off, but she ain't exactly a gripping actress either and you never really believe in her badness. Perhaps that's the point.

As said, McGregor plays Eye, a guy who is tortured by the death of his wife and daughter
and carries a few ghosts around with him as he relentlessly pursues Judd as the woman with no name (she has actually got a name, but it somehow sounds a bit more exciting if she's a famale equivalent of Our Clint) all around the world as she polishes off man after man, each a bit more bizarre than the last.

As time goes on Eye becomes more and more drawn to and obsessed by his quarry, seeing in her frail apparent defencelessness an echo of his dead wife, but really there's no excitement, just one drab blood letting after another.

K D Lang plays Eye's contact back at base, but she?s pretty anonymous as an actor.

There's also a touch too much bizarreness for my liking, and all those appearances of Eye's dead daughter just get a bit irritating. That might be what Elliott is trying to get at, but I'm not so sure.

I've seen some pretty fawning reviews about this film in my time, but I fail to see what they see, obviously, because I just bleeding hate films like this, all glossy monochromatic total art with little of substance beneath the intentionally meaningful but emptily shallow veneer.

I don't know whether I was in a bad mood or not when I saw Eye of the Beholder, that might be the case, but I just remember getting more and more irritated and bored by it all. Films noir and thrillers which do all this so much better than Eye of the Beholder abound and I don't see why you or I should waste our valuable time on Mr McGregor and his rather disappointing career - now if only he could have remained crawling down through the toilet pan for the rest of his life or even disappearing through the carpet - then you'd be talking. Eavesdropping on femmes fatales and rushing round like a mad thing just don't cut it.

Summary: