Oh buddy. It’s hard to imagine this kind of cast in a movie this poorly shot and written. In 1992, if you had put Sylvester Stallone, Tom Berenger, Charles S. Dutton, and Kris Kristofferson into one movie, it’d be for sure a summer blockbuster. In 2002 however, this movie barely registered a blip on the radar. And that’s not all. This masterpiece also luminaries such as T-1000, Young Indiana Jones, and none other than our very own Party Crasher. Oh yeah, THE Party Crasher.
So now that I got the sweet ass cast out-of-the-way, let’s get to the shit fest movie itself. Eye See You is the story of a FBI Agent Jake Malloy (Stallone) who is hunting a serial killer who targets cops. Said killer has ended 9 cops in the last 6 months and the 10th is one of Malloy’s friends. As Malloy arrives at the crime scene he receives a call from the killer…who is at his house. He is then forced listen to the murder of his girlfriend. What I just wrote is a generous description. These first 30 or so minutes of the movie were terribly written, poorly shot, and as predictable and cliché as I’ve seen. Though I did like the killer’s method – he would knock on the door, and when people look into the keyhole he puts a drill though their eyeball.
After his girlfriend’s death Malloy falls into months of depression and tries to kill himself…twice. Eventually he is convinced by his partner (a very fat Dutton) to a middle of no-where detox facility for cops, run by an ex-cop (Kristofferson).
I admit that once he arrives at the detox center the movie gets exponentially better. It climbs from the depths of a ‘terrible action movie’ all the way up the ladder to a ‘mediocre thriller’. Of course when you add those 2 halves together, it still averages out less than a sub-par movie. Bad enough in fact that the studio shelved it for 3 years before they altogether disowned it. And despite spending $55 million on the production (most of which was probably the cast) they gave it such a limited US release that it grossed only $32 thousand dollars. That’s a bit of a bust. It also didn’t help that it was released around the rest of the globe under the title D-Tox, and then renamed Eye See You for the U.S. DVD release, effectively confusing the shit out of people.
Once the mystery part of the story gets moving it’s obvious they drew upon one of the greatest mystery thrillers of all-time: The Thing. In fact, if you take the aliens and the quality out of The Thing, you’re basically left with this movie, right down to the blizzard setting.
Now I am a Stallone fan, but even surrounded by the talent present in this movie, he gives one of his weakest performances. In fact, so do Kristofferson and Berenger. And I would rip Dutton, but there wasn’t enough script for him to work with for him to take any of the blame. But this is what happens when you hand your movie over to a director who biggest critical success is I Know What You Did Last Summer. And yes, I said critical, not commercial, though that would qualify too.
My biggest problem with the movie however, is clearly the same problem that prevented this garnering a bigger release. Both under exposure and misuse of The Party Crasher. Here you have one of the greatest actors of our time, and he was given all of 10 lines or so. It’s down right shameful.
Overall I’d have to give this movie 3 Bears for the Party Crasher, but I have to take away one of those Bears since they so poorly used him.
Grizzly Bomb 