EYE FOR AN EYE
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 1995 Christopher Null
This movie kinda sneaked up on us, huh? You've probably never even heard of EYE FOR AN EYE. (I hadn't until the screening pass arrived in the mailbox last week.) But you'd think with a cast of Sally Field, Kiefer Sutherland, Ed Harris, Beverly D'Angelo, and Joe Mantegna, the studio would be pushing it a little harder.
As well they should, because, put simply, this isn't your typical Sally Field movie. A long way from "Gidget," EYE FOR AN EYE is the very aptly titled story of Karen McCann (Field), a white bread mother whose daughter is raped and murdered (in an exceedingly disturbing opening scene) by a nutcase killer (Sutherland). Ed Harris plays Mack, Karen's second (and very understanding) husband, and Mantegna is the investigator on the case.
The killer is apprehended, but a legal technicality sets him free. Frustrated with the legal system and obsessed with vengeance, Karen decides to take the law into her own hands, with some interesting consequences.
What makes this a really creepy film is not so much the plot and Karen's morbid fascination with the killer, but it's the fact that it's *Sally Field* with a streak of retribution running through her. Adding to the chilly mood is a perfectly cast Sutherland, looking and acting like he's straight out of ten years in Attica.
The movie itself could have been a lot more than it ended up being. The plot turns out to be pretty much open and shut, as not much in the way of a classic "thriller" ever starts you guessing or even makes you jump in your seat. Instead, the slow pace gets the film to evolve into more of an in-depth character study than anything else, which probably isn't the direction this picture needed to take. Put simply, the movie just never *grabs* you.
In the end, EYE FOR AN EYE turns out some good performances in ho-hum roles. And while the tension slowly builds up over the course of the film, it never quite makes it to where it desperately needed to go.
RATING: ***
\-------------------------------\ |* Unquestionably awful | |** Sub-par on many levels | |*** Average, hits and misses | |**** Good, memorable film | |***** Perfection | \-------------------------------\
-Christopher Null / null@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu -Movie Emporium (reviews) / http://www.notes.tpoint.net/emporium/ -Contributing Editor, FEEDBACK / http://www.eden.com/~feedback/ -E-mail requests to join the movie review mailing list
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