The Girl from the Naked Eye (2012)

Absolutely Fantastic

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Over the last few years martial arts films have been making more of a comeback. Sadly most of them just aren't all that great. The upside is if they can deliver on the fighting then you can look past everything else. The Girl From The Naked Eye takes on the martial arts genre, while sporting a comic promotional look and an appearance by ex-adult film star Sasha Grey. Will it be one of those surprise gems that deliver the needed action or will it be an immediate knockout? The Girl From The Naked Eye follows a man who will stop at nothing to track down the killer of the escort he was assigned to protect. This movie looked and felt like it had some good potential. All this was put to rest once the film got going. The story was all over the place and led by some really poor acting. Sasha Grey has established herself as a pretty decent actress with roles such as Entourage, but here is pretty much just a selling point for promotion since she barely even shows up. Yeah it had some decent fight sequences that are entertaining, but not enough to really help this movie work like it wanted to. There are some recognizable martial arts guys showing up to fight here and there, which makes it that much more of a disappointment when they fights don't always work. When you finally get to some of the better action and the movie seems to be finally be going somewhere, it takes a strange turn and just kind of ends. The ending made little to no sense, but this may have something to do with the slow paced story that was all over the place early on.This was a movie that should have worked but just does not. If you are of the mindset of watching martial arts films just for the fighting, there are so many others that are a much better option. Enjoy anyone in this film or not, do not let the eye catching cover art suck you in that is the best part of the movie.http://www.examiner.com/movie-in-dallas/bobby-blakey

"The Girl from the Naked Eye" is a bizarre but not altogether unsuccessful cross between an action comedy and a pulp detective story. Of it duel personalities, the latter is made especially evident through amusing stylistic homages, not the least of which are bookending shots of a weathered hard crime novel opening and closing. We also have several glimpses of an anonymous city skyline bathed in perpetual moonlight, city lights reflected in wet streets, and numerous characters whose faces are constantly veiled in a fog of their own cigarette smoke. Most importantly, we have an ongoing interior monologue narration provided by the main character; he may not physically or chronologically be the archetype of the private eye, but he certainly has the cynical, hardboiled dialogue down to a tee.His name is Jake (Jason Yee). When we first see him, he's on his knees on the floor of a hotel room, tearfully clutching the bloody, lifeless body of a young woman, who we soon learn was named Sandy. Consumed with grief and anger, he goes on a citywide manhunt to find her killer. Sporadic flashback sequences give us some context. Jake, a heavy gambler, owed $100,000 to a mobster after losing his car in a poker game. In order to pay his debt, he took a job at The Naked Eye, a local strip club presided over by the lecherous Simon (Ron Yuan). Although officially a bouncer, Jake's real job was to transport girls to and from the club for private liaisons with wealthy customers. This is how he met Sandy (Samantha Streets), a runaway who claimed she was "old enough" to know what she was doing.I'm sure you can already see how this movie is in part supposed to work. Sandy and Jake, both loners stuck in a rut through a combination of bad decisions and rotten luck, found each other and were able to bond. Although they obviously felt a sexual attraction towards one another, their relationship can better be described as pseudo-father/daughter – or, at the very least, student/mentor. Jake genuinely cared for Sandy, and the more he got to know her, the more he tried to make her see that she could do so much better for herself. She was tough, in her own way, but she did not belong in the world of prostitution. The tragedy runs deeper than the fact that she ends up dead; even if she had lived, they each made life mistakes that were too costly for them to conceivably end up together. There are only so many roads one can learn to walk down.You might think I'm trying to make a case for how compelling this movie is, but in fact, I'm merely exemplifying how effectively the filmmakers utilize noir-like conventions. It doesn't matter if we believe these characters; what does matter is that we see and understand the mechanics of the genre. We must do the same thing for the action comedy side of the film's personality, during which Jake gets into plenty of highly improbable shootouts and fistfights. Ron Yuan, who also worked behind the camera as the action director and stunt choreographer, stages several scenes that are violently fun, if a little too dependent on showy displays of martial arts. Even then, they're prevented from inundating the visual landscape; we're made to focus more on the tone than on the body slams.As Jake digs deeper into the mystery of the dead prostitute, he must evade Sonny's henchmen, a ragtag band of clueless thugs. Using Sonny's little black book, he also crosses paths with several of Sandy's clients, each of whom provides one piece of the puzzle. Meanwhile, Sonny has several meetings a corrupt cop named Frank (Gary Stretch), who Sonny regularly bribes in order to carry on with business. The prospect of Jake never getting his money is repeatedly thrown in his face, although I'm really not sure why; the film makes it quite clear, fairly early on, that Jake's mission is strictly about justice for Sandy and has long since stopped being about money. It would be too much to say that this is a story of Jake's redemption, although he certainly is much more decent at the end of the film than he was at the beginning.In spite of the narrative and visual stylistic throwbacks to noir thrillers, including a final cigarette-lighting scene vaguely reminiscent of the last shot of "Double Indemnity," "The Girl from the Naked Eye" is very much a contemporary film. This means that, in certain instances, it's rather exploitative. There's some graphic sexual content, including female toplessness, although it's evident mainly in the dialogue, which contains so many four-letter words that even a sailor is liable to blush. Although its plot is not as engaging as it could have been given the genre influences, and while it's not as technically fearless or innovative as films such as "Sin City" and "The Spirit," this is a competent, entertaining film – good looking, decently cast, nicely performed, and amusingly written.-- Chris Pandolfi (www.atatheaternearyou.net)

I was less then halfway through before I realized that if some, more experienced, people were employed to create this film, it'd probably be a blockbuster. If everyone making it has the experience, then maybe hire some better people. This film smells like Canada, I think it must have been made with 'Canadian dollars'.The acting was good, the story had a few holes in it, so as long as you don't pay too much attention, then you may not notice. Like when Sandy talks about it being her "first night on the job"The editing was good, but the scene where he's running down the stairs. Good lighting though.If you like fighting, and boobs this movie was made for you!

When it comes to independent film screeners, no film impressed us more in recent memory than David Ren's The Girl From the Naked Eye. The film stars newcomer Jason Yee as Jake, a driver for an escort service who takes on the role as heavy when his gambling debts spiral out of control.In the sordid world of prostitution, Jake find a diamond in the rough – a young 16-year old runaway named Sandy (Samantha Streets) who is working as a prostitute for Simon (Ron Yuan), a high ranking thug in a world of unlawful activities. But as we learn in the opening chapter, Sandy is murdered and Jake will make it his ambition to find out who was responsible and make them pay with his own form of justice.Jake's investigation will work outside of the police inquiry and each promising lead will take him through the underbelly of a criminal enterprise where countless ruffians are just chompin' at the bit at a chance to take their best shot against the inquisitive Jake.The Girl From the Naked Eye is told with both flashbacks and a narrative style that is quite impressive from relatively novice writers Jason Yee and Larry Madill. The narrative in particular doesn't add fluff nor does it try and infuse humor into a character that is serious to the core in his pursuit. The flashbacks were also expertly placed and allow for us to understand better Jakes attachment to Sandy while allowing the present day story to unfold in detail.Most impressive in the production are the fight sequences which are truly top rate. Jake primarily uses his fists to parade through countless brutes in his search for the truth. And the sequences are handled with the precision of a craftsman. A particular scene of Jake fighting a handful of guards in the hallway of a building complex reminded us of OldBoy and was clearly the highlight of the film.The film was purposefully shot in the darkened crevasses of the city and the film will hardly be one that the anti-smoking lobbyists will endorse. There weren't many bright colors, if any, in the film and I respected the look and atmosphere that was orchestrated by director David Ren.The story was good, but not perfect. There were a few dead ends and a few troubled spots where I might have had pieces of a scene left on the cutting room floor but for the majority of the very brisk 85-minute running time, the plot moves forward and the audience is largely entertained. And although the biggest baddest villain in the film (played by Gary Stretch) is admirable, he is not as mean and relentless as you might expect out of such a genre film.The cast in The Girl From the Naked Eye (oh, we should add here that the Naked Eye was the name of a seedy strip club to where most of the characters have connections) all do outstanding work in large and bit roles and Dominique Swain and Sasha Grey both have blink-and-you'll-miss-em scenes that do nothing more than add their name to various search engines pointing to the film.The sum of its parts results in a film that was directed with a clear vision, choreographed with surgical precision and scripted in a down-to-earth format allowing for a high return on the entertainment dollar.