Monday, May 11, 2009

The Eye of the Beholder (1999)


"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye." 
— Miss Piggy


Eye of the Beholder is a thriller movie starring Ewan McGregor and Ashley Judd, based on the novel of the same name by Marc Behm. It was written and directed by Stephan Elliott, who directed "The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert" in 1994.
The film is a remake of Deadly Circuit (Mortelle randonnée) by Claude Miller (1983), with Isabelle Adjani.



The Eye (McGregor) is an intelligence agent whose current assignment is to track down the rich socialite son of his boss and find out what trouble he has gotten himself into. This leads him to Joanna Eris (Judd), a serial killer who is in a relationship with the son, whom she murders. The Eye is a witness to the crime.
At the Pittsburgh train station, where she commits another murder, he finally corners her and is about to call for backup. Instead of turning her in, The Eye, having gone through a messy divorce in which he lost custody of his daughter, follows her in an effort to save her. He hallucinates constantly that his daughter is with him, and comes to think of Eris as a vulnerable, lost child.
The Eye follows her across the country and through several murders. He soon discovers that Eris and her father were homeless and that he abandoned her, explaining her pathological hatred of men. When Eris helps a rich blind man (Patrick Bergin) in an airport, the two become involved, fall in love and become engaged, and it looks like they might even live a happy life. The Eye, who has witnessed all of this, can not bear to let her go, and is willing to do anything to stop her from having a relationship with another man. While the couple is on the way to the chapel for the wedding, The Eye shoots a bullet in one of their tires and the car crashes, killing Eris' fiancé. After a stranger (Jason Priestly) forces Eris to inject heroin when her car dies in the desert, Eris loses her unborn baby before fleeing to Alaska, with the Eye on her trail.
In Alaska, The Eye gains the courage to ask Eris out, as he is a frequent patron of the diner at which she waitresses. They have a few drinks in the evening, both getting emotional, and Eris mentions where she would like to be buried when she dies. She then says she has nothing to give him, that she is empty, and that he should leave her alone. The next day the police, as well as Eris' psychiatrist (Genevieve Bujold), come to the diner to arrest her. The Eye tries to save her, taking her to his trailer. There she is horrified to find out that he has been following her. She shoots him, although only with a blank cartridge. She flees and he follows her on a motorcycle, where he catches up to her, and she realizes he is the "Angel" who has saved her from every tight situation she has gotten into. At this revelation she crashes the car. She tells him she knows him as her "Angel". The fact he also survived being "shot" drives home the idea that he is her angel.

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