i should have known , damn it , i should have known . ewan mcgregor - codename : " eye " - is pointing a high-tech rifle-ly gadget at a fat , bald business-oriented american engaging in illicit sexual activities in a window across the street . we get the requisite electro-green through-the-sight view . we the audience , seeing a high tech rifle-ly gadget , of course think that eye is going to assassinate the target , but instead , he pulls the trigger and the rifle takes twenty or so hazy , low-quality photographs , which eye then proceeds to fax and e-mail to everyone in his target's office . all right , so thirty seconds in , i was slightly befuddled by this seemingly pointless rifle/camera , but i was still open minded . . . maybe there's a really good reason for it . i've got reason to believe , you see - i admire a lot of ewan mcgregor's previous work . . . and he's obi wan ke- friggin-nobi for god's sake . and director stephan elliot's last movie priscilla , queen of the desert was a quirky little delight . there's some genuine talent involved here . i think at the twenty minute mark , there was still a spark of hope in my heart . eye has been assigned to investigate the leader of his organization's son ( i still have no idea what this organization was - british intelligence ? national spy ring ? private investigation ? ) , who is apparently stealing from his trust fund . he has received his assignment from k . d . lang , through an elaborate and expensive teleconferencing briefcase . when eye tracks his target to an expensive- looking secluded house , he witnesses a mysterious and beautiful woman ( ashley judd ) take a knife out and proceed to stab the poor bastard . ok , that's odd , i think to myself , this could be interesting . then she starts to cry , and through her tears exclaims " merry christmas , dad ! " for the first time . so begins our tale of obsession . . . or . . . something . the rest of the movie involves ewan mcgregor's eye character following ashley judd around to every corner of the united states , totally and completely obsessed by this woman from afar . throughout his entire professional life , he has been a voyeur ; so when he falls for someone , the only way he can handle it is to watch and drool through telescopes and cameras . fine , that's a lovely premise , i suppose . but gosh darn it , if you're going to go there , you better have some sort of explanation . and that's precisely where this film fails . this is the kind of movie that pisses me off . it's an abortion , a collection of half-formed and wasted ideas that amounts to absolutely nothing in the end . it pretends it is something that it is not - a surreal and deep psychological character study wrapped in a high-tech thriller . here , the filmmakers have confused " surreal " and " deep " with " vaguely unclear " and " crammed full of insultingly obvious metaphors . " i never , even for an instant , had the foggiest idea why eye would fall so in " love " with this woman who changes wigs and kills people . the movie offers only two explanations , neither of which make a lick of sense . explanation number one : the obnoxious presence of eye's imaginary daughter , who was taken away from him by his wife some time ago , tells him he shouldn't leave ms . judd . explanation two , which by the end of the film has been beaten into our heads through imagery and dialog and even the title of the movie : " beauty is in the eye of the beholder . " whoo hoo , that helps , thanks a bunch , case closed . that's as deep as it gets , folks . there is an attempt at an explanation in the final minutes , which , instead of tying everything together , ends up being as profound as a clever sixth-grade mad lib . there are secondary characters that move in and out of the picture and serve little or no purpose except to make the audience wonder what the hell the point was . my personal favorites include : the prison-matron modeled after austin powers' frau farbissina , who apparently taught ms . judd everything she knows about wearing wigs ; jason priestley's awfully played dirty desert vagrant #1 , who tries to emulate dennis hopper a la blue velvet , but fails miserably ; and the cop-who-sees-ashley-fleeing-an-accident-scene-and- then-wants-to-pay-for-sex- but-is-shot . each one in this sad little parade is a little more pointless than the last . the script pays no attention to the laws of time and space . any time one of the frequent location changes occurs , the camera zooms in on a souvenir snow globe , and minutes , weeks , or years could have passed . bewilderingly inane stylistic decisions plague the whole affair - one character passes a glass of cognac to another in a slow-motion close-up awash in a lot of bass . ewan mcgregor at one point takes up residence in a bell tower just so he could be repeatedly awakened and deafened by the giant bell . jason priestly starts philosophizing about sharks , then laughs maniacally . . . cut to random guy with eye patch . . . iguana out of focus . . . iguana comes into focus . wow , man . when i found out afterward that this film was based on a novel , it came as no surprise to me . there are plenty of elements here that , if extended and fleshed out more , would have made for a decent story . and i wouldn't be surprised if i found out there was an hour and a half of footage cut from this movie lying in a landfill somewhere , or waiting in the wings for the dvd special director's cut . . . not that anything would ever possess me to purchase such a thing to find out what i was missing . the last ten or so minutes featured a conversation between the eye and the judd that was supposed to be some sort of revealing exposition . some guy in the back of the theater was talking on his cell phone , and this time i didn't particularly care all that much because what was happening on the screen was a steaming pile of unholy crap ; the audience around me chuckled and whispered sentiments similar to what i was thinking . someone near cell-phone-guy did eventually yell , " shut the hell up ! " , but it was a lot funnier when we thought he was talking to the screen .
