White of the Eye (1987)

Donald Cammell's best realized solo project is -- like his overall best film, Performance, co-directed with Nicolas Roeg -- a two-character study about madness that falls just short of allowing style to triumph over substance. Cammell takes the simple premise of the loving husband and father harboring a murderous rage against women and explodes it with a arsenal of technical wizardry. He's intent on providing visuals that reflect how dislocated the two main characters are: Paul White, by his psychosis, and his wife, Joan, by the undoing of ten years of marriage to a man she realizes she never really knew. The setting, in the Arizona desert, allows Cammell to offer a desolate landscape for his story of increasingly isolated characters, plus the overlay of Apache mysticism that fuels Paul's maniacal view of the world. Unlike the morally ambiguous world of Performance, White of the Eye offers a more conventional dynamic between the two leads. Joan realizes her worst fear, that she has escaped one bad relationship (her long-ago lover, Mike, who conveniently shows up to provide a red herring) for someone even more demented. David Keith, a reliable character actor, is sturdy as Paul, and Cathy Moriarty, confirms the promise of her stunning debut in Raging Bull with a shaded performance that suggests both vulnerability and reserves of emotional strength. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide