EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
STARRING: Ewen MacGregor, Ashley Judd, Patrick Bergin, k.d. lang, Jason Priestley, Genevieve Bujold DIRECTOR: Stephan Elliott WRITTEN BY: Stephan Elliott (based on the novel by Mark Behm)
An early candidate for "Worst Film of 2000," Eye of the Beholder is a soporific ordeal that completely ruins a mildly interesting beginning, gropes blindly through some very hard-to-swallow plot points in the middle, then takes far too much time lurching to its conclusion.
The story unfolds almost entirely from the point of view of a British surveillance expert named "The Eye" (MacGregor). He's a troubled fellow; his wife has left him and taken their young daughter, and he can't find them despite all his expertise, so he carries on imaginary conversations with his child. Assigned to track the son of a British official in order to catch a blackmailer, he witnesses the poor fellow's brutal murder by a beautiful but obviously disturbed woman (Judd, who must really want to be pigeonholed in these third-rate thrillers). Improbably, he recognizes a kindred spirit and quickly becomes obsessed with her. Soon, thanks to the thoroughly risible script, he quits his job with Her Majesty's Secret Service and doggedly trails her on a whirlwind tour of much of the United States (mostly filmed in Montreal, presumably so the filmmakers can show the world how sophisticated Quebecers are with their Gitanes and Cognac.) She's a chameleon who changes identities as often as she changes outfits-- which is a lot. Of course, Our Hero knows this is merely the result of her being abandoned as a young girl by her father, and he fantasizes that he can save her, just as he knows she will fill the void in his life.
That we are expected to accept such lip-service characterization and porous plot structure is only the least of the film's flaws. Even the spy gadgetry, which can often be fun in movies like this, is unconvincing. To be fair, the movie starts out rather promisingly with the eavesdropped murder, but very quickly degenerates into a steaming pile of what they call merde in Montreal. What it doesn't do very quickly is end; it drags on interminably through scene after pointless scene, including a stupid interlude between Judd's character and a heroin-addicted loser played by Jason Priestley.
Director Elliott seems to run out of ideas about halfway through this clunker, so he resorts to the road-movie plot device he used to far better effect in 1994's The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Needless to say, it doesn't help. The film's pacing is simply too slow and the main characters too inaccessible to elicit much in the way of interest. Suspense, so important to any thriller, is rarely generated after the first murder scene. In the eye of this beholder, at least, the movie is a waste of about two hours.
GRADE: 1/2
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