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Eye-See-You review
:. Director: Jim Gillespie
:. Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Charles Dutton
:. Running Time: 1:32
:. Year: 2002
:. Country: Germany/USA
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A new serial killer is in town. He specializes in the murder of police officers and mutilates the victims. Jake Malloy (Sylvester Stallone), a happily married FBI agent, is after him. But when his wife is killed things become personal until he finds the killer, who has committed suicide. Depressed, he starts drinking and ends up in a private detox clinic where patients are starting to die one after the other.
Eye-see-you is poor thriller that mixes two genres. The beginning is a serial killer movie featuring the face to face between a cop and a killer. As in many other films of the genre, a very intelligent but insane psycho mutilates his victims according to a particular ritual. All of a sudden, the film switches genre for a bad "whodunit" thriller that pretends to be chilly.
This change of direction is the only good idea of the film. While awkward, it at least boosts the story by starting it over. Unfortunately, the second half falls short pretty quickly due to slow pace and an abundance of clichés. It is unclear if they thought they could build one good movie with two good halves or if they tried to recycle Psycho. As a result of this fake good idea, the two parts are lowered to a TV movie level.
Eye-see-you is at times violent. The use of a metal bar as a weapon is reminiscent of the stalactite used in another Stallone flick, Cliffhanger. The difference is that Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger and Die Hard 2) is a much more skillful action director than Jim Gillespie. Consequently, here the action scenes are flat, the shots are hackneyed, and the rhythm is sluggish. Violence has been watered down to create a distressing and suspicious atmosphere... which fails. In addition, the film can't fulfill its ambitions since there is no emotion, no suspense and very poor action. As for the actors, even charismatic Tom Berenger and Robert Patrick are dull and without life.
We couldn't say Stallone acts badly, but for 20 million dollars we could wonder whether he acts well. He looks so tired, and it makes one wonder if he hasn't had enough to see his star fading as Rocky and Rambo are long gone. Eye-see-you is a terrible film, as expected by its lamentable title and Stallone's recent filmography.
Laurent Ziliani
 Movie Reviews: from 1998 to 2011
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