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Movies / On DVD / Eye of the Beholder
Eye of the Beholder

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Eye of the Beholder (1999)

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Reviews Counted:85

Fresh:8

Rotten:77

Average Rating:3.4/10

Consensus: Improbable and muddled.

Runtime: 1 hr 41 mins

Genre: Dramas

Synopsis: Eye of the Beholder is a startling journey into obsession, the story of an intelligence agent so taken with a beautiful killer he cannot bear to apprehend her. Set in the surreal world of a... Eye of the Beholder is a startling journey into obsession, the story of an intelligence agent so taken with a beautiful killer he cannot bear to apprehend her. Set in the surreal world of a high-tech voyeur, the tale follows him across the country as he embarks on a desperate quest for this enigmatic femme fatale.

Ewan McGregor stars as The Eye, a lonely, isolated British intelligence agent who has lost his wife and daughter, for which he blames his own unforgivable inaction. Yet detachment is part of the job.

The Eye's current mission is to track Joanna Eris (Ashley Judd), a woman suspected of blackmailing the son of a senior British official. But Eris is far more than a blackmailer. She is a seductive, shadowy master of disguises, a frenzied murderer, a lost orphan and an abject mystery whose rage is as fierce as her beauty.

The Eye cannot help but be fascinated by Joanna - especially when a surveillance photo of her seems to reveal the ghostly image of his long-lost daughter, whose absence haunts him. In his deepest fantasies, their two fates as lost souls are somehow connected. As he follows Joanna from murder to murder, the more The Eye finds that he needs to watch her. Not capture her. Not speak to her. But watch her, becoming inexorably more and more obsessed with what he sees. He shadows Joanna without ever letting her know he is there - except that sometimes unexpected turns of fate make it seem as if she has a guardian angel watching over her.

But the closer The Eye gets to Joanna's life, the more dangerous his fantasy becomes. Soon he begins to meddle in her existence, taking action, altering her fate. Yet to catch her would be to lose her, something The Eye cannot allow again in his life. So the odyssey continues . . . until the pursuer and the pursued find themselves on a perilous crash course. [More]

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Ashley Judd, Patrick Bergin, K.D. Lang

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Ashley Judd, Patrick Bergin, K.D. Lang, Ann-Marie Brown, Jason Priestley, Geneviève Bujold, Charles Powell

Director: Stephan Elliott

Director: Stephan Elliott
Screenwriter: Stephan Elliott
Producer: Nicholas Clermont, Tony Smith
Composer: Marius De Vries

[See More Credits]

Reviews for Eye of the Beholder

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1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Text View | 1 2 3 4 5 >> >|
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The result is compellingly bonkers.

Full Review Source: Time Out | comment Comment
01/26/06
Time Out
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

McGregor's and Judd's attentive, focused performances never allow their characters to become lost in Elliott's fractured, virtual America.

Full Review Source: Sight and Sound | comment Comment
12/02/02
Ken Hollings
Ken Hollings
Sight and Sound

The film maintains its story perfectly from the beginning, creating a gorgeous atmosphere and layering the story with hints of thriller, mystery, romance and psychological drama.

Full Review Source: Shadows on the Wall | comment Comment
12/10/01
Rich Cline
Rich Cline
Shadows on the Wall

If you see and like it, then never read a movie review again: there's no need, since you will enjoy every picture you see.

Full Review Source: UK Critic | comment Comment
01/01/00
Ian Waldron-Mantgani
Ian Waldron-Mantgani
UK Critic

A bewildering and frustrating experience.

Full Review Source: Empire Magazine | comment Comment
01/01/00
Kim Newman
Kim Newman
Empire Magazine
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Sacramento News & Review | comment Comment
08/07/08
Mark Halverson
Mark Halverson
Sacramento News & Review
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Variety | comment Comment
06/17/08
Deborah Young
Deborah Young
Variety
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Newsweek | comment Comment
11/01/07
David Ansen
David Ansen
Newsweek

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Big Picture Big Sound | comment Comment
07/14/07
Joe Lozito
Joe Lozito
Big Picture Big Sound
N/R

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: New York Observer | comment Comment
04/27/07
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris
New York Observer

As misogynistic as anything I've seen in ages, it's tricked up with enough fancy cinematography (by Guy Dufaux) to guarantee it sub-Hitchcockian credentials of the sort that some reviewers eagerly hand out to Brian De Palma.

Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | comment Comment
03/06/07
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Chicago Reader

Remove the directorial flash and filigree, and its narrative would be easier to track.

Full Review Source: Houston Chronicle | comment Comment
07/21/05
Jeff Millar
Jeff Millar
Houston Chronicle

It's not good when you check your watch every 20 minutes during a 107-minute movie. It's bad when you think, "Yeaahh, rrright" almost as often.

Full Review Source: Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY) | comment Comment
06/25/04
Judith Egerton
Judith Egerton
Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)

During one scene, some characters take a break by watching a video of Roger Corman's great 1960 The Wasp Woman. I suggest you do the same.

Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid | comment Comment
06/05/03
Jeffrey M. Anderson
Jeffrey M. Anderson
Combustible Celluloid

On the bright side, I only lost an hour and half of my life watching this piece of [expletive deleted], unlike those involved in the making of it, who lost months.

Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | comment Comment
03/19/03
Brian Mckay
Brian Mckay
eFilmCritic.com

As if to make up for the disjointed quality of the story, director Elliott has incorporated various themes into the film, such as the repetitive use of snow globes, angel statues, and astrology... Unfortunately, these things only pretty up a bad picture.

Full Review Source: Film Quips Online | comment Comment
02/08/03
John R. McEwen
John R. McEwen
Film Quips Online

Unfortunately, Elliott’s latest effort contained too many blanks for me to fill in.

Full Review Source: ReelTalk Movie Reviews | comment Comment
08/02/02
Betty Jo Tucker
Betty Jo Tucker
ReelTalk Movie Reviews

If you took five different jigsaw puzzles, threw the pieces together on a table top and spent two hours trying to make a cohesive picture, you might end up with something along the lines of this.

Full Review Source: Kalamazoo Gazette | comment Comment
06/23/02
James Sanford
James Sanford
Kalamazoo Gazette

Eye of the Holder makes you wonder how bad are the scripts that Ashley Judd and Ewan McGregor turn down.

Full Review Source: Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL) | comment Comment
06/20/02
Jeffrey Westhoff
Jeffrey Westhoff
Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL)

It's late January, winter is entrenched, and in the lull between the bounty of Christmas and the renewal of spring, the big screen can sometimes seem barren -- a movable famine.

Full Review Source: Globe and Mail | comment Comment
04/05/02
Rick Groen
Rick Groen
Globe and Mail
 
 
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
Text View | 1 2 3 4 5 >> >|
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Latest News for Eye of the Beholder

July 05, 2005: In Other News...Roman Polanski, Ewan McGregor, and An Ally for Brooke Shields
Controversial director Roman Polanski will make an appearance in court this month -- not to continue his infamously interrupted 1977 statutory rape case, but to testify in... More...

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