Simply A Masterpiece

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Absolutely Fantastic

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

An Eye for an Eye (1981) *** (out of 4)After witnessing his partner murdered, Detective Sean Kane (Chuck Norris) flips out and goes after the men who did it. He resigns from his job but after his partner's fiance is also murdered he sets out to bring down the bad guys, which leads him to a drug operation.AN EYE FOR AN EYE is a pretty good Norris movie and I'd argue that it's at the very top of the ones that he has made. The story itself is pretty much your standard revenge tale but where the film really succeeds is with its non-stop action and a pretty stellar cast. The film certainly has some flaws here and there but if you're a fan of 80's action movies then it's a must see for its entertainment value.As I said, the best thing going for the picture was the very good cast. You've got Norris playing the type of role that suits him well. He's certainly believable in the role of a cop and his martial arts skills add most of the fun. You've got Mako in a supporting part and he adds some nice comic touch. Richard Roundtree was a bad muthafuc*er long before Samuel L. Jackson and he's fun here. Then you've got Christopher Lee is a somewhat thankless role but he's still fun to watch. Matt Clark and Rosalind Chao are good in their small roles as well. Then there's Professor Toru Tanaka who plays one of the bad guys and nearly steals the show every time he's on screen.The San Francisco location certainly help the film and we're also given a nice score as well as some good cinematography. Of course, people are coming to a film liek this for the action and there's plenty of that. Countless shoot outs and various other forms of violence certainly make the film quite memorable. Add the cast into all of this and you've got a very entertaining revenge picture.

Sean Kane (Chuck) is the best undercover narcotics cop in the San Francisco police department. During what he initially believes to be a standard bust, his partner is killed. His classic BYC (Black Yelling Chief) Capt. Stevens (Roundtree) yells at him for a while about his rogue ways, and, without even being asked in the traditional fashion, Kane turns in his badge and gun. But the threat is far bigger than he originally believes, as a reporter, Linda Chan (Chao) is murdered. So Kane teams up with his buddy James Chan (Mako) and the two men work together to get justice, results, or some reasonable combination of the two. But it's not going to be easy, as dapper baddie Morgan Canfield (Lee) is a powerful man with connections, and his right-hand man has some massive right hands, because it's Professor Toru Tanaka playing, as if he could play anything else, The Professor. So Kane and Chan have their work cut out for them, but even in the face of insurmountable odds, Kane never loses his cool, or doubts the fact that "he's a human weapon!" Will an eye be taken for an eye? Find out today...An Eye for an Eye is generally what people think of when discussing early-80's Chuck: it's a little slow, a little dull, but it's steady, solid, and gets the job done. Perhaps the filmmakers didn't trust Chuck alone at this early period in his career, so they loaded the movie up with action fan favorites: Mako, Professor Toru Tanaka, Roundtree, and of course Christopher Lee. Unfortunately, the fight between Mako and Tanaka left a bit to be desired, and Lee doesn't show up until 43 minutes in. He should have been more murderous and sinister. But he does his usual professional job, and his mustache and pipe make him seem so sophisticated. Amazingly, in the same year, 1981, Lee starred opposite none other than Eddie Deezen in another San Francisco-set movie, Desperate Moves (1981). We don't know which was filmed first, but to go from Eddie Deezen to Chuck Norris, or vice versa, is enough to make your head spin.This was the phase of Chuck's career where he had a blonde mop-top and no facial hair. He might be the only man of action to make the sweater-with-a-collared-shirt look seem intimidating. An Eye for an Eye follows the formula of "Chuck chasing a hulking brute who's going around murdering people" template later used for Silent Rage (1982) and Hero and the Terror (1988). While Mako makes a great sidekick, and there are some excellent moves displayed in the fight scenes, there's no conceivable reason why this needed to be 104 minutes. It should have been 90 at most. But then again, this was before ADD had come along and ruined people's attention spans.That's just the thing: as we talked about in our Hero and the Terror review, we're not against slow paces necessarily, but take a comparable action star of the day like Arnie. His personality, accent and charisma can help viewers power through the boring parts. Chuck doesn't have those tools at his disposal. His co-stars ended up falling into some similar ruts: Roundtree ended up playing BYC's again, most notably in A Time to Die (1991). Director Carver apparently had no problem with Chuck's shortcomings and went on to work with him again with Lone Wolf McQuade (1983). From there he did Bulletproof (1988) with Gary Busey and Danny Trejo, and River of Death (1989) with Dudikoff. So his resume of video-store action speaks for itself. Finally, it should be noted that fan favorite Richard Norton is listed as a stuntman, but doesn't appear in the movie, unfortunately.An Eye for an Eye certainly has its moments, but there's some dullness surrounding them, which is a common problem for Chuck movies. Don't hesitate to see it, just be prepared for that.

About all the great movies that starred Chuck Norris, "An Eye for an Eye" happens to be one of my faves. Chuck plays Sean Kane, an San Fransico cop who kick major butt when his partner and his wife are killed. First, his partner doing a sting operation gone bad when he gets run down, his wife gets strangled by a huge henchman known only as The Professor(Professor Toru Tanaka, 1930-2000). While he chased her, he also lifted that Volkswagon that nearly ran him over. Mako play Sean's instructor who give him a hand in find the killer(Christopher Lee) who had the people killed. Richard Roundtree well known for play John Shaft, plays Sean's boss who has a tough time understanding him. The fight scenes are great. I like when he took out every villain in different fashions. The late night boat scenes when he did those double-kicks. The office where he had his hands tied behind his back. And the outdoors/indoors scenes where everything is totally awesome. The distracting spin-kick, the kick the villain into the pool. And most of all, the battle between Sean and the Professor. Despite being thrown across the bar and tables Sean managed to have the momentum to do a flying sidekick to take out the Professor once and for all. Great movie is all I can say!3.5 out of 5 stars!

Okay, let's start this review off by stating for the record that this flick sure ain't no groundbreaking work of exceptional cinematic art. However, it's an enjoyably funky little martial arts action item that does the trick quite nicely, getting immediately down to butt-kicking business right from the stirring start and never letting up to the thrilling end. A clean-shaven, baby-faced Chuck Norris stars as rugged San Francisco cop Sean Kane, who after losing his partner in an ambush (a brief appearance by Terry Kiser of "Weekend at Bernie's" fame) quits the police force and decides to go after the no-count drug-dealing evildoers responsible on his own, using his chopsocky prowess to clean their clocks like nobody's business. So far, so formulaic and predictable. Fortunately, director Steve ("Big Bad Mama") Carver maintains a snappy pace and a gritty atmosphere which keeps the pretty flimsy story on track throughout. The action is both plentiful and exciting, with especially cool use of strenuous slow motion and a substantial body count racked up by our man Chuck. Moreover, a bang-up supporting cast helps a lot: the late, great Mako as a fellow martial artist who's constantly criticizing Norris' sloppy form (Mako makes for a really funny comic relief character), Richard "Shaft" Roundtree as Norris' huffy, disapproving superior, Rosalind Chao as a gutsy lady TV reporter, the always terrific Christopher Lee as the suavely slimy main villain, Matt Clark as a weaselly cop on the take, and the enormous Professor Toru Tanaka as a hulking ferocious flunky for the bad guys (the scene where Tanaka beats up a Volkswagon is an absolute riot!). Sure, this film will never be hailed as some kind of great overlooked classic, but it's nonetheless loads of solid, silly, straight-down-the-line early 80's action fun and that's good enough for me.