Tag: vigilante

“I don’t understand, how have I not heard of this till now?” Jamie asks, absolutely baffled by the mock up poster adorning the cover of Patrick’s advance copy of Fresh Horses. Instead of Andrew McCarthy and Molly Ringwald (as we all know and love), the poster now featured… Molly Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy. “And now they’re older?” Jamie asks, even more baffled. “Sure, I mean I think the movie is more like a legacy sequel, but obviously the original play is unchanged. I’ll explain it all in the introduction. Boy, Dick Computer is really gonna hate that we’re working on this,” Patrick explains with delight. First up, research. Kyle pops some popping corn. Jamie grabs their well worn DVD copy of Fresh Horses (the Funky is implied). Patrick distributes the cable knit sweaters, although they all know that’s a mistake. Things are gonna heat up once they get their Funk on. Turns out that’s an understatement. By the time Matt watches Jewel walk away, tears in his eyes, they are fully funkified. Jamie asks what they’re all thinking. “Why aren’t we doing this movie?” His words are soft, but the weight they carry is heavy. Here they were thinking they were pulling a fast one on Dick Computer and turns out they pulled a fast one on themselves. “You’re right,” Patrick says resolutely, “We have to do this. Put the Platonic Solids on ice cubes. We’re directing a movie.” Turns out that’s easier said than done. When Patrick gets off the phone with the producer he’s got a strange look on his face. “Unbelievable.” Patrick explains. “He says they already have their director. Marty is all in on it. He says Marty will only let us have it for a little quid pro quo. A little eye for an eye.” That’s right! We’re watching the Sally Field classic Eye for an Eye. The one annoyance here is that the book actually just says “Now a Major Motion Picture” on it, but doesn’t have the dignity to put Sally Field on the cover or the credits on the back. For shame. Let’s go!

Eye for an Eye (1996) – BMeTric: 23.5; Notability: 20

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 22.8%; Notability: top 8.4%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 2.1%; Higher BMeT: Barb Wire, Kazaam, Bio-Dome, Striptease, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace, The Crow: City of Angels, Ed, Hellraiser: Bloodline, Spy Hard, Poison Ivy 2: Lily, The Glimmer Man, Eddie, D3: The Mighty Ducks, Bordello of Blood, First Kid, Celtic Pride, Dunston Checks In, The Quest, Chain Reaction, and 37 more; Higher Notability: Bed of Roses, Chain Reaction, Spy Hard, The Fan, The Associate, Down Periscope, Jingle All the Way, Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, D3: The Mighty Ducks, Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace, Bordello of Blood, Before and After, Up Close & Personal, Barb Wire, Space Truckers, The Sunchaser, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Glimmer Man, Daylight, Maximum Risk, and 1 more; Lower RT: The Dentist, Bio-Dome, Kazaam, Ed, Spy Hard; Notes: Wow, we’ve seen 13 of the top 20 BMeTs for 1996. For a while we were really not doing ‘90s films, but in the past few years we’ve managed to claw our way to decent coverage.

RogerEbert.com – 1.0 stars – “Eye for an Eye” is a particularly nasty little example of audience manipulation leading to a conclusion that, had I accepted it, would have left me feeling unclean. It’s about an ordinary woman who is led to seek blood revenge, in a plot where the deck is stacked so blatantly it’s shameless. It’s ironic that this movie is being released at the same time as “Dead Man Walking.” Both are about killers and their victims, and both are, in a way, about the death penalty. “Dead Man Walking” challenges us to deal with a wide range of ethical and moral issues. “Eye for an Eye” cynically blinkers us, excluding morality as much as it can, to service an exploitation plot.

(Yuuuuup. I wonder, if I gathered together all of the vigilante justice films together, how many Ebert would have panned. I just checked the very weird film The Star Chamber. He gave it two stars, but mainly because it just became a routine thriller in the end. It is an intriguing question.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY56N6irNCk/

(Jesus, they kind of go for it with this trailer. They put Kiefer’s weirdo performance front and center and dare you to go and see this ridiculous film. For me this is a terrible trailer for the exact reason Ebert suggests: it is manipulative.)

Directors – John Schlesinger – ( Known For: Pacific Heights; Marathon Man; Midnight Cowboy; Far from the Madding Crowd; Yanks; The Day of the Locust; Darling; A Kind of Loving; Cold Comfort Farm; Billy Liar; The Falcon and the Snowman; Sunday Bloody Sunday; Terminus; Honky Tonk Freeway; Visions of Eight; The Innocent; An Englishman Abroad; A Question of Attribution; Madame Sousatzka; The Tale of Sweeney Todd; Future BMT: The Believers; BMT: The Next Best Thing; Eye for an Eye; Notes: won and Oscar for Midnight Cowboy, and was nominated for Darling and Sunday Bloody Sunday. We already saw his last ever feature film (The Next Best Thing). He died in 2003.)

Writers – Erika Holzer – ( BMT: Eye for an Eye; Notes: Wrote the book.)

Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver – ( Known For: Rise of the Planet of the Apes; Jurassic World; Dawn of the Planet of the Apes; Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes; Jurassic World; In the Heart of the Sea; Avatar: The Way of Water; Avatar: The Way of Water; Avatar: Fire and Ash; Avatar: Fire and Ash; War for the Planet of the Apes; Dawn of the Planet of the Apes; Mulan; Avatar 4; Avatar 5; Future BMT: The Relic; BMT: Eye for an Eye; Notes: They’re like … huge writers. Wrote Jurassic World, and the second and third Avatar films, a bunch of the Planet of the Apes films. What the heck? Basically, hugely commercially and critically successful after their first two films qualified.)

Actors – Sally Field – ( Known For: Forrest Gump; Spoiler Alert; 80 for Brady; Mrs. Doubtfire; Steel Magnolias; Stay Hungry; Smokey and the Bandit; Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey; Home for the Holidays; Beyond the Poseidon Adventure; Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco; Soapdish; Not Without My Daughter; Murphy’s Romance; The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning; Places in the Heart; Punchline; Norma Rae; The End; The Way West; Future BMT: Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde; Surrender; Where the Heart Is; BMT: Say It Isn’t So; Smokey and the Bandit II; Eye for an Eye; Notes: Won two Oscars for Norma Rae and Places in the Heart (which had the famous “You really like me!” speech). Was also nominated for Lincoln. She’s unbelievably attractive in the Smokey and the Bandit series.)

Kiefer Sutherland – ( Known For: Paradise Found; Stand by Me; A Few Good Men; Desert Saints; The Lost Boys; Flatliners; The Vanishing; A Time to Kill; To End All Wars; Max Dugan Returns; Phone Booth; Beat; Dark City; Dead Heat; The Last Days of Frankie the Fly; Freeway; Truth or Consequences, N.M.; River Queen; Young Guns; The Killing Time; Future BMT: Renegades; Taking Lives; The Sentinel; Mirrors; The Nutcracker Prince; The Cowboy Way; The Wild; BMT: The Three Musketeers; Young Guns II; Eye for an Eye; Pompeii; Marmaduke; Zoolander 2; Flatliners; Notes: Won two Emmy for 24. It is genuinely the one and only time people watched him act and were like … this guy is good at acting. There is something insanely magnetic about his performances though. Like movies warp around him.)

Ed Harris – ( Known For: A History of Violence; Absolute Power; Enemy at the Gates; A Beautiful Mind; Apollo 13; The Hours; Copying Beethoven; State of Grace; The Abyss; The Human Stain; Gone Baby Gone; Nixon; Knightriders; Long Day’s Journey into Night; Masked and Anonymous; Borderline; Stepmom; China Moon; Glengarry Glen Ross; Buffalo Soldiers; Future BMT: Needful Things; National Treasure: Book of Secrets; Milk Money; Just Cause; Radio; Man on a Ledge; Phantom; BMT: Eye for an Eye; Geostorm; Notes: Nominated for four Oscars (Apollo 13, The Truman Show, Pollock, and The Hours). Kind of crazy he won’t get it in the end. As much as a wish I could believe it, he’s 75 now, and the last few performances I saw him do he was looking a little old to go for an awards play.)

Budget/Gross – $20 million / Domestic: $26,877,589 (Worldwide: $26,877,589)

(That’s a disaster, but also I’m not sure I really believe the budget. In 1996 we were giving rote thrillers $20 million? Maybe because of the cast.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 7% (3/41): Overwrought, thinly written, and all-around unpleasant, Eye for an Eye crudely exploits every parent’s nightmare with deeply offensive results.

(Whoa! That’s low. Like … real low. Like lower than Paranoia which we chose because it was so poorly received. All-around unpleasant just about describes it.)

Reviewer Highlight: A B movie that somehow won the lottery and got an A-movie cast and director. – Joe Leydon, Variety

Poster – Sklog for a Sklog

(It’s amazing that there was a time where this poster made sense. That you could see it in a theater and be like ‘oh, sure.’ It’s like a joke poster now. What if justice fails? Obviously you have to blow away the perps, you middle-aged housewife, you. Anyway, it’s not even all that interesting. But at least it’s blue. C-.)

Tagline(s) – What do you do when justice fails? (C)

(Insane. Certainly I can see why this is considered the kind of grabby statement that would be the tagline for your movie. But it’s still insane.)

Keyword(s) – imdb-keyword-based-on-novel;based-on-book

Top 10: Fight Club (1999), Forrest Gump (1994), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Shutter Island (2010), Schindler’s List (1993), The Prestige (2006)

Future BMT: 74.9 The Turning (2020), 72.6 Zoom (2006), 70.2 London Fields (2018), 69.6 Gulliver’s Travels (2010), 67.3 Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004), 66.3 102 Dalmatians (2000), 65.4 Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul (2017), 64.2 Valentine (2001), 59.5 The Big Bounce (2004), 58.1 Best Defense (1984), 57.9 The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990), 55.5 Hanging Up (2000), 55.4 Eye of the Beholder (1999), 55.2 Snow Dogs (2002), 54.3 The Divorce (2003), 53.9 Abandon (2002), 53.3 The Stepford Wives (2004), 52.5 Addicted (2014), 50.8 Freedomland (2006), 50.0 Kull: The Conqueror (1997)

BMT: Battlefield Earth (2000), Dragonball Evolution (2009), Cats (2019), Left Behind (2014), Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), Jaws 3-D (1983), One Missed Call (2008), Fifty Shades Darker (2017), Fifty Shades Freed (2018), The Bye Bye Man (2017), The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009), Striptease (1996), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), Firestarter (2022), The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011), Tarot (2024), Meg 2: The Trench (2023), The Haunting (1999), Fair Game (1995), Eragon (2006), After We Fell (2021), North (1994), Monkeybone (2001), The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999), Conan the Barbarian (2011), After Ever Happy (2022), Exorcist: The Beginning (2004), An American Haunting (2005), The Snowman (2017), The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising (2007), Sliver (1993), Pinocchio (2002), The Musketeer (2001), Shanghai Surprise (1986), Get Carter (2000), Exit to Eden (1994), After (2019), Alex Cross (2012), Queen of the Damned (2002), Congo (1995), …

Best Options (Sneaks): 50.8 Freedomland (2006), 42.2 What’s the Worst That Could Happen? (2001), 37.3 Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), 30.0 What’s Your Number? (2011)

(David  Keith plays O.G. in Sneaks and is in Eye for an Eye, but the TMDB ordering is wonky on weirdo films like Sneaks so he’s very low billed. The other solid option was What’s the Worst That Could Happen?, but I think it ended up as a blind spot since it was originally the comedy option. Possibly you couldn’t get to cycle #2 as well, but I can’t remember.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 8) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Sally Field is No. 1 billed in Eye for an Eye and No. 4 billed in Say It Isn’t So, which also stars Chris Klein (No. 1 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 2 billed) => (1 + 4) + (1 + 2) = 8. There is no shorter path at the moment.