There are countless films available out there that have the same general premise, structure, and outcome as Eye for an Eye. Starting with how things go from silly to sillier to silliest, to the overacting and everything unremarkable in between, this film is, like a lot of movies, guilty of these crimes. But just because others are similar in nature doesn’t excuse its wrongdoings.

The premise goes as such: after a woman’s daughter is brutally raped and murdered, the man guilty of the crime at first gets caught but is then set free on a (very implausible) technicality. Deciding that she can’t wait for the law to once again catch up to the man responsible for her daughter’s death, the bereaved mother sets out to seek revenge herself.

It’s not fair to say that the film fails because its general premise is a clichéd one. Sometimes the best stories are the ones already told, and if told again well then things can turn out satisfactory. But Eye for an Eye almost seems designed to avoid even mediocrity let alone being satisfactory. It starts off with a scene that shows promise that the film is going to be something different, something edgy and “out-there” with the (quite in detail) depiction of a brutal rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl while her mother hears everything over a cell phone, helpless to do anything to help her own daughter. But where the film at first seems like it could be something special, it quickly shows its true colours as the silly, ridiculous movie it really is.

The movie masquerades itself as something edgy and dark, something dealing with the serious issue of murder, death, and the bereavement that goes hand-in-hand with it. But not long after the death of this young girl, the family, and specifically the mother, seems to not really forget but move on too easily from the incident. She becomes more preoccupied with the man who killed her than the fact that her own daughter is no longer alive. This could have been a plausible plot point, perhaps showing what the death of a close family member can conjure up if it weren’t for the ridiculousness that follows. Sally Field goes from bereaved mother to angry vigilante, which is not only one of the most ridiculous sights to behold in and of itself but she does so far too quickly and easily. No offence to Field as an actress, as I rather like her usually, but here her acting is far too over the top and, quite frankly, it’s impossible for me to take her seriously in the role she plays here.