SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

geddyneilalex28 This movie is complete and total crap. There is no hidden meaning, it isn't high brow art that it is misunderstood, it just plain sucks. The film doesn't seem to know what it wants to be, and the acting is terrible. The actors are good, they just have nothing to work with here. The scenes are just cobbled together and most, if not all, the characters have no dimension, no depth, and no motivation. The actors are forced to just phone it in, and the blame is not theirs. Comcast streams it for free, so after watching Kiss the Girls, my wife (who had not seen KtG) suggested we watch another Judd film. We picked this one, and that was a major mistake. Save yourself and avoid our error, don't waste your time!

PeachHamBeach CAUTION: POSSIBLE SPOILERSLongtime Ewan fan here, and this is one of the few movies of his that I actually did not like when I first saw it. It is EXTREMELY fast paced, and sometimes a bit far-fetched. How does the Eye remove his surveillance equipment so quickly once his subject is suddenly moving on to another life, another name, another identity???!!!In spite of what seem to be flaws, EYE OF THE BEHOLDER is an entrancing, haunting film about two people who don't know each other, but who are connected in ways that can't be imagined or understood until at least halfway thru the film.The Eye, a British surveillance specialist is sent by his boss to investigate the boss's son, who has been withdrawing a lot of cash from the bank. Boss wants to know what sonny is up to. The Eye is a professional, excellent with equipment, superb at watching without being noticed. It's clear he's been a spy for a very long time. That's why the former "farfetched" idea of him being able to pull microphones, knock down cameras, and slither from site to site without being found out turns out to be acceptable. His real name is Stephen Wilson, and his wife and daughter are gone, apparently because his work was more important to him than his family. After they left, The Eye realized what he lost, and when we meet him, he's been a lonely, isolated, damaged man for quite a while.The Eye locks on to the boss's son and discovers that the Embassy Brat has been giving money to a beautiful young woman. She meets the son of the boss at a museum in Washington D.C. and as she is captured by the Eye's camera, The Eye feels like he's seen a ghost. The story, and the obsession begin here. The Eye begins abandoning duty in favor of a sense of loyalty. Indeed it seems definite that The Eye has lost his sense of reason. His obsession with the murderous yet lovely woman grows as he follows her all around the country. Ashley Judd's many wigs and personalities are beautiful as they are astonishing. Do give this clever, suspenseful thriller a try. I think if you focus and follow the film, you will get it. It's a story of complete obsession and how obsession can really drive a person to do things they normally would not do, and how it can change them forever, for good or for bad.

creagcridhe This is one of my "great movies of all time". It just works. A father obsessed with a daughter, a daughter obsessed with a father, and the actors totally sold it. I read the book, and watched this numerous times and I can tell you, this is one of the few times a movie not only captured the spirit of the book but surpassed it. This movie is a testament to Ashley Judd and Ewan McGregor and their acting ability. I was on the edge of my chair the entire time I watched this movie. If I find this movie in the $5 bin anywhere I by all the copies because I can't exist in a world where this movie is placed beside B movies. Kudos to the director and everyone involved in this movie, you created a masterpiece.

zardoz-13 "Eye of the Beholder" is an ultra-slick, existentialist, avant-garde thriller in the tradition of famed Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 cult favorite "Blow-Up." This erotically-charged but enigmatic murder mystery about a British surveillance expert who pursues a seductive American femme fatale without her knowledge from Washington, D.C., to the cold, barren stretches of Alaska casts Ewan McGregor of "Star Wars: Episode One" fame as a relentless, never-say-die gumshoe and sexy Ashley Judd of "Double Jeopardy" as an icy cool, mistress of disguise, serial killer. Although predictability never curdles this superbly lensed cat & mouse chase melodrama, "Beholder" shuns conventional "Dragnet" style narrative clarity and will inevitably frustrate audiences yearning for a straightforward yarn.As Detective Stephen Wilson, known principally as the 'Eye,' McGregor impersonates a younger version of Gene Hackman's electronics espionage wizard in "The Conversation" (1974). Unlike the reclusive Hackman character, Wilson works for the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., but he is no James Bond. Wilson receives orders to shadow the son of a prominent English official. The father suspects that junior has been embezzling money from a trust fund. While spying on this larcenous lad with an anonymous lady friend one evening, Wilson gets the surprise of his life.The drop-dead gorgeous babe chick, Joanna (Ashley Judd), tells her boyfriend that she wants to play a game. Joanna strips to her bra and panties and then lies down on a plastic tarp for her lover to kneel on and knots a blindfold over his face. Sauntering behind him, she brandishes a knife and carves her unsuspecting lover up like a Christmas turkey! Afterward, the blood-splattered siren collapses in a shower of tears, crying out for her long gone father, and then sinks the corpse in a nearby lake.Wilson contacts Hilary (K.D. Lang), a loquacious version of 007's Miss Moneypenny at the British Embassy and reports the homicide. Although he has been taken off the investigation, Wilson goes AWOL and tails the comely criminal without arousing her suspicions. Eventually, Wilson becomes hopelessly infatuated with Joanna. He discovers her true identity after he recovers a sample of her pubic hair from her tub and sends it off to Hilary for lab analysis. The results alarm Wilson because he learns that this exotic woman has a record. Wilson monitors Joanna with an incredible arsenal of electronics equipment as she commits one murder after another. Even more surprising, he abets her afterward by destroying any evidence which might incriminate her! Along the way, we learn bits and pieces about this puzzling secret sleuth and the mysterious serial killer from the expository dialogue that justifies the screen time parceled out to the supporting cast. Stephen Wilson's wife deserted him and ran off with his daughter because his job prevented them from taking up permanent residence anywhere. Riddled with guilt, this troubled detective imagines that his catty little daughter now accompanies him during his surveillance assignments, carrying of improbable conversations with him a la "The Sixth Sense." As for the emotionally distraught Joanna, she suffers from a father complex and cries for her daddy after she slays her victims. When Wilson discovers Joanna's real identity, he learns that her father abandoned her at Christmas when she was young. Eventually, our protagonist tracks down Joanna's mentor, a harridan, Dr. Brault (Genevieve Bujold) who supervised Joanna during her rehabilitation. "I taught her how to survive, "boasts Brault to Wilson during a brief tête-à-tête, "Kill or be killed." What novelist Marc Behm made abundantly clear in his book, Australian writer & director Stephan Elliot prefers to reveal only through motivated action. The characters rarely reveal anything solid about themselves. Literally, you have to piece the puzzle together from everything Elliot puts on the screen. For example, the 'Eye's' name, Stephen Wilson, is shown during a transmission link sequence as well as his occupation as a detective. The crucial bit of information that the filmmakers unobtrusively slip in is that the unstable detective comes to regard Joanna as if she were Lucy, the daughter his ex-wife abducted when she cleared out. Wilson is haunted because he couldn't prevent his wife from abandoning him and the specter of a little girl that shows up in his visions warns him that he cannot afford to lose Joanna. Basically, obsession becomes a nightmare for Wilson. Consequently, he struggles to control Joanna's life. When she tries to settle down with a rich, blind man, Alex (Patrick Bergin), and have a baby, Wilson disrupts her status quo relationship in a jealous fit of rage by assassinating Alex.Although the principal characters do little to endear themselves to us, watching their actions becomes akin to voyeurism. Everybody in this trendy travelogue is as predatory as you can imagine, perhaps with the exception of K.D. Lang's compassionate Miss Moneypenny character and Patrick Bergin's generous-to-a-fault blind man. Particularly loathsome is poster boy Jason Priestly as Gary, a scummy heroin addict who takes advantage of Joanna when her car breaks down in the middle of the desert.Judd has a field day in a role that gives the starlet a makeover of sorts every quarter hour. She decks herself out in all kinds of wigs and wardrobe when she goes after each poor guy. Unlike vulnerable Libby Parsons in "Double Jeopardy," Judd's Joanna is a cold-blooded stalker. Often, her character is compared to a shark, forced to swim forever and kill anything that crosses its path.However, nothing about Judd's Joanna is glamorous, and the filmmakers aren't condoning her murderous activities. She gets her comeuppance in the end, and we don't so much sympathize with her as we pity her.Ostensibly, "Eye of the Beholder" relies on its stunning scenic grandeur, hip electronic orchestral score, personable cast, and the referential narrative qualities of the script to compensate for the omission of a formula, action-oriented plot. Nevertheless, "Eye of the Beholder" is an unusual thing of beauty that too many critics have mistaken for a standard action opus!