Product Details

• Actors: Ewan McGregor, Ashley Judd, Patrick Bergin, Geneviève Bujold, k.d. lang
• Directors: Stephan Elliott
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: October 24, 2000
• Run Time: 114 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (191 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00000F40X
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #43,713 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This problematic thriller boasts several inspired elements, especially intelligent, committed performances by leads Ewan McGregor and Ashley Judd, both of whom have become hot commodities. Fans should definitely investigate their incisive work here, even if McGregor and Judd's talents are ultimately cast into a lost cause.

Judd plays a black-widow serial murderer named Joanna, who is systematically seducing and killing men who, in one way or another, are outside the ordinary. (Among her victims is a blind mulimillionaire, played by Patrick Bergin, and a nasty loser portrayed, surprisingly, by Jason Priestley.) McGregor is on board as a British intelligence agent who happens to be following her. Referred to as "the Eye," McGregor's operative is a haunted man abandoned years before by his wife and daughter. His isolation is such that he holds imaginary conversations with the latter, and she advises him to take pity on Joanna and protect her even as she carries on with her monstrous mission.

That's precisely what he does, at a distance, ushering in comparisons to Hitchcock's classics about voyeurism and obsession, particularly Vertigo and Rear Window. (Allusions to Francis Coppola's The Conversation are unavoidable as well.) But despite the great material (the 1980 source novel by Marc Behm was highly praised by The New York Times) and a fascinating cast (including Geneviève Bujold and k.d. lang), Eye of the Beholder bogs down in Stephan Elliott's often thoughtless, obvious direction. Elliott (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) grinds down several members of the cast by insisting on dreary, one-note performances, and he makes a long movie seem even longer by telegraphing story twists and other developments long before they happen. Justice would be served if one could extract Judd and McGregor's appearances here and graft them onto a better movie, but so it goes. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pointless, May 31, 2000

By	"ericakb" (Hayward, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eye of the Beholder (DVD)

This movie is probably the worst storyline I have ever seen. Ewan MacGregor follows Ashley Judd around for months, spying on her & supposedly keeping her safe from harm. He looks into her background - finds out she was abandoned as a child by her father, feels empathy for her - because his wife took off with his daughter. A daughter he imagines seeing throughout the entire movie. There is no real plot, other thank that and the ending is pathetic. "I wish you love", indeed! Do not waste your money or time on this movie.

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Two psychotics find a deeper psychosis, June 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Eye of the Beholder (DVD)

This movie is so bad that I'm sure that someone will like it. A twelve-year-old's idea of an "art" film. Lots of cute effects and disconnected scenes, as one crazy stalks another for far too long. For me it just went from bad to horrid to utterly awful, finishing with an ending that plumbed the depths of pointlessness....

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This is bleak!!, October 2, 2004

By	Janis Ian (as in Mean Girls, not the singer) (Evanston, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eye of the Beholder (DVD)

This is bleak! Ewan McGregor plays a British secret agent (known only as "the Eye") sent to spy on a diplomat's son because of a questionable woman that son is involved with. Questionable? That doesn't begin to describe it. The agent soon sees that the woman in Question, Joanna Eris, is a maniacal killer, about to stab to death the man the agent was sent to watch. Then no sooner then he finds out he's too late to save the poor man, the agent starts getting seduced by Joanna Eris like she were sweet or something. But Joanna Eris isn't sweet! She's a scum-sucking road
murderer! Then the crazed agent starts following Joanna Eris around like she's the object of his tenderest affections. Maybe in his demented way, she is. As she wanders all over the country, he follows her and becomes all the more obsessed with her, forsaking his job and everything else. What could he possibly see in her? I have no idea. Really. Guess maybe he's just got a BIG lunatic crush on her. Some people actually say they like this movie. But a lot of them say the ending is really bleak. What were they expecting? The only way I could think of to pull a happy ending out of this cinematic train wreck is if both the Eye and Joanna were sucked up into the land of Oz, where they went to see the Wizard, and he gave the Eye a brain and Joanna a heart. But that would be just TOO MUCH thinking out of the box for this cinematic toxic waste dump. It should be left where it is with an ending that fits. Why is this movie a hopeless mess that some are still messing with, wishing it had a "happy" ending? Because Joanna Eris is a mean girl, that's why! At least some of us who are mean admit we're mean. But Joanna Eris tries to hide it behind little whiny pleas, of "Oh poor me. My father disappeared on Christmas one year. So that's why I can carry a big knife among all the hapless guys who err my way and stab them all to death and squeal "Merry Christmas, Daddy!" in the most blood curdling yell ever to haunt the big screen. This is crass, man. Evil takes a cinematic form in this mess. Don't be fooled. I know this must seem like your typical lurid, short on plot or coherence, blurring good and evil, cinematic clunker. But in reality is is so much more. And less! Suck on that! e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!