moonspinner55 Review of Eye for an Eye

Eye for an Eye (1996)

Statement about violence in our society gets exploited for cheap suspense

[4/10 · 18 October 2006]

Bumfuzzled screenplay by Amanda Silver and Rick JaffaIt, working from Erika Holzer's novel, is such a contrived mess that it's amazing it attracted the likes of Sally Field and Ed Harris (not to mention director John Schlesinger, still in "Pacific Heights" mode). The leads play a married couple mourning the death of their daughter, murdered at home by a psychopath; mom soon begins stalking the creep, freed from prison on one of those movie technicalities. Barely two-dimensional, the picture could be filed under Thrillers For Dummies. Schlesinger underlines every plot point twice, just so we in the audience don't miss a trick; meanwhile, Harris' father is so weak-willed he can't even hold an intelligent conversation with his wife about the death penalty without looking stunned into submission. Kiefer Sutherland's killer is, naturally, full of color and audience-rousing nastiness. This presents another problem: why make a disgusting, immoral punk so vivacious? It's almost as if Schlesinger is saying life is suburbia turns us all into robots...or maybe targets. *1/2 from ****