Eye of the Beholder (1999)

Plot of Eye of the Beholder: A British secret service investigator, Stephen Wilson is given the of finding out what is happening to the son of his boss. Staking out an apartment with sophisticated equipment he sees the young man stabbed to death by a young woman, but instead of apprehending her he follows her to a sleeper train where she kills another man. Stephen is hallucinating that his daughter is present, although she and the mother have left him some time ago. Off the train Stephen follows the woman, Joanna, and when she is cornered by police saved her by creating a diversion. Later, in San Francisco he sees her become involved with a rich blind man, apparently in love, but to prevent the relationship going further shoots up the couple’s Rolls-Royce killing the man. Joanna drives off into the desert and is preyed on by a local hick, being saved by Stephen. Stephen loses her trail but later picks it up again finding her working as a waitress in a diner in Alaska. But the police are also on the trail. How can it all end?

Content: Some sex and nudity, but not at the same time. Some drinking and at one point heroin features as an unwanted injection. Stephen is seen using all sorts of sophisticated surveillance devices, which creak a bit in 2025. It just shows how things have progressed. He needs a large suitcase to carry all his stuff. Today a spy could probably carry it all in his pockets. Wherever Stephen is led, he buys a snowstorm paperweight, and at one point we seen them all lined up. Joanna kills a couple of people, once with a knife the man blindfolded and expecting something else. She disguises herself by using different wigs, and often appears in different underwear. Stephen is dogged in his pursuit of her, sometimes helped by his controller back in headquarters.

 A View: I often think I am not really getting it as a film progresses, so am I being thick, or just lacking awareness, but it turns out in this case others felt the same. The fact that the two people are supposed to have a connection, she because she had lacked a loving father and him because he has lost is daughter, is not evident. But if you have read this you will know, just like others, that this is what we are supposed to know. I think it’s a case of the writer knowing what is happening but failing to put it over to us. In the end though, this is just a mish-mash of improbable events, causing irritation rather than entertainment.

Fun Fact: CinemaScore is an organisation of people who stand outside cinemas and ask the public what they thought by scoring A to F. This is one of the 19 films ever to score an F.