'Eye See You' isn't worth looking at

Eye See You (aka "D-Tox") (2002)
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Charles Dutton, Kris Kristofferson, Tom Berenger, Polly Walker, Robert Patrick, and Christopher Fulford
Director: Jim Gillespie
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

When his girlfriend is murdered by a serial killer who has targeted him and other cops, FBI Agent Jake Malloy (Stallone) falls apart. After a suicide attempt, he checks himself into an isolated rehab center that specializes in helping police officers. The killer vowed to stay after Malloy, however, and as a blizzard cuts the facility off from the rest of the world, it appears that he may have be making good on his promise.


"Eye See You" is a charmless spin on the "Ten Little Indians"-type mystery--a group of strangers in an isolated setting, one among them is a killer who is bumping off the rest--with a heapin' helpin' of slasher-film style violence added.; Unfortunately, most of the characters never evolve beyond annoying stereotypes and there are a couple of really glaring plotholes that should have been fixed before this movie went anywhere near the public. To make matters worse, the acting is nothing special, except in a negative sense where Stallone is conccerned. He is so awful in this film that if I hadn't just seen "The Expendables", I would be wondering.. the guy could act at one time, right? I'm not misrembering, am I?).

Oh... and the ending is one of those infuriating ones where the hero ends up devolving almost to the level of the bad guy and lowers himself to a status of little more than a murderer himself.

There's nothing new or even particuarly good here. Don't bother seeing "Eye See You."

'A Perfect Getaway' is not a perfect thriller

A Perfect Getaway (2009)
Starring: Steve Zahn, Milla Jovovich, Timothy Olyphant and Kiele Sanchez
Director: David Twohy
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A honeymooning couple (Jovovich and Zahn) on a multi-day nature hike in Hawaii discover that brutal killers targeting tourists may have taken refuge in the same area. Can their new friends (Olyphant and Sanchez) be the murderers?


"A Perfect Getaway" is a weakly written thriller that is elevated by good performances by its stars and nice cinematography. While it pulls off its Big Reveal with some skill and "plays fair" for the most part--allowing the viewers to try to solve the mystery of who the murderers are before the filmmakers do--the writer/director's assumption that the viewer will buy into the fact that someone is ex-military or used to work as a butcher makes them spooky and creepy and viable murder suspects is moronic and probably an notion that only someone born and bred in Los Angeles and Hollywood would buy into. Other red herrings presented as the film unfolds are even weaker, leading the film be rather dull and boring.

Unless, of course, you think military people and outdoorsy types are somehow inherently spooky and scary. If you do, then you'll probably find the film to be all sorts of kinds of exciting and thrilling.

That sensation may dissapate, however, when you realize that the murderers are rather idiotic, in that they box themselves in on a dead-end trail and then call attention to their location by notifying the authorities and putting an innocent couple in a really flimsy frame that would break at the slightest scrutiny. (I'm aware that the driving force behind the killers is the psychotic goal one of them has to "live 100 lives" but they can't have been doing it for as long as the story implies if they've been as stupid as they are shown to be here).

It's too bad the good performances here are wasted on such a weak script. All the stars come across as perfectly normal and likeable people (assuming Southerners and military men don't scare you out of hand) and it's especially nice to see Jovovich in a role unlike those she usually plays. And it's surprising that the writer/director who brought us such fun B-movie romps as "Warlock" and "Pitch Black" would blow it so badly when making a more "respectable" thriller. But then that may have been the problem. He was going for "realism," but instead ended up putting Hollywood biases on display?

The real mystery is how this movie turned out so bad

The Black Dahlia (2005) Stars: Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson, Mia Kirshner and Hilary Swank Director: Brian De Palma Rating: Three of Ten Stars A publicity-hungry police detective (Eckhart) arranges to have himself and his younger partner (Hartnett) assigned to the grisly murder of a would-be actress (Kirshner). As one detective starts to mysteriously come unglued, the other uncovers not only dark secrets relating to the dead actress, but to his partner as well.

The Black Dahlia is almost completely devoid of focus. The script moves randomly from plot to subplot to barely relevant stuff, with the Black Dahlia murder being relegated to just above a minor tangent among a whole tangle of plots and subplots. The style of the film also swings widely between filming styles--at some points, it's heavy-handedly apeing the filming styles of the 1930s and 40s (complete with obligatory soft focus on the leading ladies), at others he goes for an almost documentary style detachment, and then there's the incredibly annoying sequence when the camera suddenly takes the POV of what Hartnett's character is seeing, thus putting the audience in his shoes. Not only is this a pointless break in style, it is very badly done. 

And then there's the editing. There isn't a single shot in the film that lasts more than ten seconds and all quick edits and jumping around with the camera angles gets tiresome very fast. 

To make this already weak film as bad as possible, it is further burdened by an ending that is is completely and totally botched, with the solution to the Black Dahlia killing being completely nonsensical and the other Big Revelations not quite fitting with the rest of the story either.
It's a shame this movie is such a mess, because many of the actors give some great performances that are in step with the film noir/crime drama movies of the 1930s and 1940s. 

 
Aaron Eckhart turns in a great performance as a crooked cop (I'm not spoiling anything here... the Eckhart character is a standard for the kind of movie being emulated) whose life has come to orbit around the one decent thing he's done in his life... the rescue of a young woman from a life prostitution (Johansson). It's a shame his performance and character are undermined by the awful script that introduces a late-movie twist that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. 

And then there's the hero of the tale, Hartnett's good-hearted, honest cop who is irrevokably tainted by the evil he encounters in the course of this film. His character is in genre, except that he spends too much time crying; it's okay for him to be sensitive, caring, and concerned with justice, but he shouldn't be getting weepy all the time. His character is, unfortunately, also undermined by the botched ending in the film and a particularly stupid scene where he shoots up the home of Swank's character. 

Someone couldn’t make up their mind what they were doing with this movie. Whatever potential it may have had is ruined by an inconsistent visual tone and a script that is messy, unfocused and internally inconsistent. It's a film that deserved to bomb and it's one that isn't worth the 2+ hours it's going to suck away from your life. It's one of those incompetently made films that falls in a zone of mediocrity that leaves it with no worthwhile aspect. 

In fact, the only Brian De Palma film worse than this one is his 2006 follow-up, Redacted. It's even more halfbaked than this one. 

'The Kingdom' was better than expected

The Kingdom (2007)
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Ashraf Barhom, Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner, and Ali Suliman
Director: Peter Berg
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Four FBI agents (Foxx, Cooper, Bateman, and Garner) travel to Saudi Arabia where they team with two Saudi police officers (Barhom and Suliman) to stop a deadly terrorist and his followers.


I went to see "The Kingdom" fully expecting to hate it. The Hollywood establishment seems obsessed with justifying or even excusing terrorists, and I expected this film to be a reflection of that. However, I was pleasently surprised. This movie shows terrorists exactly for the evil, psychopathic cowardly scum that that they are. It has none of the "one man's terrorist is another man's hero" crap that so many American "intellectuals" are so fond peddling.

The film also shows that the 75 years of Saudi Arabian and American governments have allowed the conditions that gave rise to the likes of the movie's "Abu Hamza" and the real-world Osama bin Ladens through their inaction and unwillingness to behave in anything but fashions that are self-serving and self-aggrandizing. In fact, the film has the rather accurate message that the American and Saudi governments are their own worst enemies--the American government being fawning toadies to the Saudis, and the Saudi government behaving like barbaric bullies.

My very favorite aspect of the film was the way the FBI agents and the Saudi state poilice officers ended up working together once politics and distrust was set aside, showing that good cop are good cop, no matter where in the world they are.

Almost every aspect of the film was very enjoyable, playing like a cross between "CSI: Riyadh" and an action flick, except for the very last minute or so, where we had to have some of the standard issue Hollywood moral equivilency dished out. Fortunately, the dose was not big enough to ruin the film, and it was so ludicrous that no intelligent person could do anything but snicker at it.

Eastwood is in a literal cliffhanger in 'The Eiger Sanction'

The Eiger Sanction (1975)
Starring: Clint Eastwood, George Kennedy, Vonetta McGee, Jack Cassidy and Gregory Walcott
Director: Clint Eastwood
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Jonathan Hemlock (Eastwood), an assassin turned college art professor is blackmailed by his former employers to come out of retirement and perform one last "sanction". The problem is the target is one of three mountain climbers that Hemlock has to entrust his life to during a climbing expedition on Mount Eiger.


"The Eiger Sanction" is a slightly below-average thriller that gets a little extra kick from spectacular nature photography and mountaineering footage in the American southwest and Europe. It also benefits from a nice music soundtrack.

The actors all give decent performances, but the story relies on too many far-fetched coincidences to work and a hidden plot that is really rather pointless. It may be there to underscore the corruption of the spy agency that Hemlock was employed by, but it really does seem like they're going about things the hard way.

The film has moments, but overall it's pretty weak. It might be worth catching if you come across it on TV, but it's not worth going out of your way for. (It's one of the films included in the "Clint Eastwood: American Icon" four-movie collection where it's basically inoffensive filler.)

Clint Eastwood is stalked in directorial debut

Play Misty for Me (1971)
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter, Donna Mills and John Larch
Director: Clint Eastwood
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A small-town disc-jockey (Eastwood) sees his life turned upside-down when an obsessed fan (Walter) starts stalking him.


"Play Misty for Me" is a nifty thriller where a completely innocent guy gets sucked into the fantasy life of a psycho chick with deadly results. It's the film "Fatal Attraction" wanted to be--something director Eastwood observes in a documentary included on the DVD when he calls it a "remake"--but has neither the style, class, nor properly tuned moral compass of this flick.

In "Fatal Attraction", the characters are almost universally dislikeable and Michael Douglas' character pretty much gets the life he deserves. In this film, skillful casting has guarenteed the characters are likeable--even the psychotic stalker wench has some charm about her, due to a well-done performance from Jessica Walter--and we further have a protagonist whose side the audience is completely on. (Eastwood's character Dave is not married and has been seperated from his girlfriend for several months when he crosses paths with his futuer stalker--he is not betraying any promises or commitments when he gets involved with her, nor did he make any promises to her. It's all-too-rare to see a movie of this type with a completely innocent main character... and for all his womanizing ways, Dave doesn't deserve the hell that comes down upon him and those around him.)

The scenic locations and some intense attack scenes when Eve also this movie very, very strong. I also admire the way Eastwood gave us a "false ending" halfway through the film, going all idyllic and romantic on us when Dave's stalker is apparently put away. The sequence goes on a little too long, but it was a great idea and when Evelyn reappears, the anticipation of her next strike is that much more intense.

If you enjoy movies like "Fatal Attraction"--and want to see that movie done better, over a decade earlier--or if you want to see Clint Eastwood in a role very different from the ones he usually plays, you should check out "Play Misty for Me".

'Torn Curtain' is a Cold War thriller that still works

Torn Curtain (1966)
Starring: Paul Newman, Julie Andrews, Gunther Strack, Wolfgang Keiling, Ludwig Donath and Tamara Touronova
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

When Dr. Sarah Sherman (Andrews) discovers her fiance, disaffected American nuclear physist Professor Michael Armstrong (Newman) is hiding something from her, she decides to trail him on a mystery flight to East Berlin. There, she learns is about to defect to East Germany during a showy media conference. But, there is more to Armstrong's defection than mere treason to his country, and Sherman unwittingly puts both herself and him in mortal danger.


"Torn Curtain" is a thriller that turns from spy movie to escape/persuit film fairly early in the story--far earlier than is typical in these sorts of films.

From beginning to end, this film breaks with the conventions of the Cold War spy movies, particularly those made in the 1960s. The lead "spy" is not flashy and he probably has never touched a gun in his life--Armstrong is about as low-key as he could possibly be. Similarly, while the East German secret police are menacing and definately oppressive, none of them are overtly as flamboyantly evil.

The film features the usual good acting, fast-paced story, and skilled use of visual story-telling elements that we expect from a Hitchcock movie, but the production design leaves a little to be desired. Specifically, I wish some more effort had gone into the matte paitings that transport Paul Newman from a Universal soundstage to an art museum in East Berlin; the paintings are obvious and almost embarrasingly bad.

"Torn Curtain" isn't as ignored as some of Hitchcock's early films, but it is one that deserves more attention than it gets. It's a well-done, low-key thriller that fans of Hitchcock should see. Fans of Julie Andrews should seek it out as well, as she's better here than in anything else I've seen her in. (Yes, even "Mary Poppins".)