The Girl from the Naked Eye Review: Fun, But Anti-Climatic

An entertaining comic book style noir is something along the lines of the first few issues of “Sin City”- over the top with likable characters and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

“The Girl from the Naked Eye” is like those early issues of “Sin City” with some added bonuses.

The story is about Jake (Jason Yee), a driver for “The Naked Eye,” a gentleman’s club that’s a front for a prostitution ring. He’s looking into the murder of Sandy (Samantha Streets), an escort who he’s responsible for. What follows is a murder mystery that might get him killed by everyone he works for and with.

It’s pure comic book noir from beginning to end. The movie even starts showing a novel with a comic book cover and opening to the first page. If you take the story seriously you will be disappointed. If you take it for what it is you will have a blast. There are scenes where you will historically laugh and say “this scene is so stupid.” One example is the opener, where Jake is holding Sandy’s corpse. It’s meant to be sad, but the happy song and Yee’s overreacting make the scene unintentionally funny.

The action scenes are as over the top as one might expect. There’s lots of martial arts action and “that can never happen in real life” and is enough to satisfy even the most die-hard noir fan. There’s one scene where Jake is getting beaten by cops with nightsticks and he just keeps on getting up. It’s pure gold.

The highlight of the movie is the great chemistry between Yee and Streets. They both naturally work off of each other and you can feel their relationship develop in Jake’s flashbacks. Even how Jake handles Sandy’s little secret shows a side of him that is worm and not like how he’d act towards other people.

The biggest complaint with “The Girl from the Naked Eye” is that it has one of the most anti-climactic endings in film history. Here we have this big murder mystery finally being unraveled and then it all just ends in one huge disappointment. It feels like the writers either couldn’t think of a way to end the movie or ran out of time. It’s a big middle finder to the audience considering how fun the rest of the movie was.

“The Girl from the Naked Eye” is a fun noir whodunit film with plenty of over the top action scenes, likable leads and unintentional funny scenes. It’s a fun film all around until the disappointing anti-climax that’s worth a looking at.