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Eye of the Beholder (1999)

tomatometer

5

Average Rating: 3.1/10
Critic Reviews: 20
Fresh: 1 | Rotten: 19

Improbable and muddled.

audience

33

liked it
Average Rating: 2.7/5
User Ratings: 10,021

My Rating

Movie Info

Part high-tech spy thriller and part psychological study, Eye of the Beholder was Ewan McGregor's first feature film following his mainstream breakthrough performance in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The Eye (Ewan McGregor) is an agent of the British Secret Service, equipped with the latest in high-tech crime fighting gadgetry and assisted by his indefatigable collegue, Hilary (k.d. lang). The Eye's latest assignment is a surveillance project; the son of a well-known politician has

R, 1 hr. 41 min.

Drama, Romance, Mystery & Suspense

,

Stephan Elliott

May 23, 2000

Desintation Film Dist. Corp.

Cast

All Critics (92) | Top Critics (24) | Fresh (8) | Rotten (80) | DVD (16)

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.

March 6, 2007 Full Review Source: Chicago Reader | Comment
Chicago Reader
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Remove the directorial flash and filigree, and its narrative would be easier to track.

July 21, 2005 Full Review Source: Houston Chronicle | Comment
Houston Chronicle
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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.

April 5, 2002 Full Review Source: Globe and Mail | Comment
Globe and Mail
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In trying to both inflame and indict our morbid curiosity, Elliott fails to make the needed connection between the audience and a peeper who has lost his moral balance.

May 11, 2001 Comment
Rolling Stone
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Impenetrable mess of a movie.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: New York Times | Comment
New York Times
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The tone is stillborn and static when it should be ominous and engrossing. The characters fail to connect with the audience. This is a cold, distant, and off-putting motion picture that generates little in the way of tension or suspense.

January 1, 2000 Full Review Source: ReelViews | Comment
ReelViews
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You're unlikely to see a scene as weird as the one where McGregor beats up Judd's blind fiancée, as a way to warn him that she'll kill him. That seems counter-intuitive, but nothing in Eye of the Beholder reeks of anything near the notion of intuition.

August 12, 2010 Full Review Source: Examiner.com | Comment
Examiner.com

The result is compellingly bonkers.

January 26, 2006 Full Review Source: Time Out | Comment

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.

June 25, 2004 Full Review Source: Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY) | Comment

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.

June 5, 2003 Full Review Source: Combustible Celluloid | Comment
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.

March 19, 2003 Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com | Comment
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.

February 8, 2003 Full Review Source: Film Quips Online | Comment
Film Quips Online

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

December 2, 2002 Full Review Source: Sight and Sound | Comment
Sight and Sound

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

August 2, 2002 Full Review Source: ReelTalk Movie Reviews | Comment
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.

June 23, 2002 Full Review Source: Kalamazoo Gazette | Comment
Kalamazoo Gazette

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

June 20, 2002 Full Review | Comment
Northwest Herald (Crystal Lake, IL)
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Eye of the Beholder

Directed by Stephen Elliott, Destination Films, 1999, Ewan McGregor, Ashley Judd, Patrick Bergin, k.d. Lang and Genevieve Bujold. Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller. Question: Can a man fall in love with a woman that he's never met, spoken to or doesn't even know her real name? Well, in the Eye of the Beholder, they

August 5, 2011
Tired of Previews
Tired of Previews

Super Reviewer

Curious tale, a cross-country Rear Window if you can imagine that, about a surveillance agent who obsesses about a woman he's tailing. It's s weird but also somehow mesmerizing.

July 23, 2011
moonrivers

Super Reviewer

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Latest News for Eye of the Beholder

July 5, 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...

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