An Eye For An Eye

With a Chuck Norris film comes a certain kind of expectation. This ranges from fans to potential assassins. The fans expect hard, fast, furious action with Norris on screen constantly. The assassins expect a turgid piece of Seventies garbage. An Eye For An Eye lies somewhere in between and due to my own feelings towards Norris, the scale is more weighted towards the irritating.

The film opens with an intense gunfight that leaves Sean Kane's (Norris) partner dead. Instantly, the plot has been laid down and from now on the audience knows what to expect. Director Steve Carver throws in a fair amount of heartbreak (friend Linda Chan's death) to add more tension to the fight sequences, which he pretends are not the central element of the film. He adds a bunch of chase sequences and wooden exchanges between characters to fatten up a very basic film, contorting the pace.

There are some moments of flair, however. Shots of the San Francisco bridge are constructed nicely and Carver has an unflinching eye for action set pieces - the slow burning to death that Kane's partner endures is captured second for second.

Norris is on typical bare-chested form, delivering his lines down-and-dirty without much real meaning behind them. Familiar moments from a range of Seventies cop shows pop up - the badge and gun on the Captain's desk scene, the Captain gaining a new found respect for the renegade cop scene... its all present, correct and mundane.

The ultimate showdown is enjoyable, although the fight scenes leading up to it seem to have been shot poorly on purpose in order to set the final battle apart. Yet, it isn't worth dragging yourself through 106 minutes of an overlong movie to watch it.

Fans of Norris and his simple and interchangeable movies will find An Eye For An Eye as enjoyable as the equally shallow Lone Wolf McQuade. People with taste, however, will not look twice.