In Eye for an Eye (2025), director Rachel Whitmore delivers a tightly-wound psychological thriller that casts Angelina Jolie as Evelyn Marek, a former international prosecutor whose world collapses after her daughter is murdered during a human trafficking case gone wrong. The film follows Evelyn’s descent from idealist crusader to a relentless vigilante, uncovering a hidden network of global elites protected by political immunity and blood money.
Jolie commands the screen with the weight of personal loss, her performance layered with grief, fury, and the moral ambiguity of a woman who abandons law for vengeance. Supported by a sharp, tense script and stunning cinematography from Linus Sandgren, Eye for an Eye unravels across Europe and North Africa with the pacing of a ticking time bomb. The haunting score by Hildur Guðnadóttir adds emotional depth, especially in scenes where Evelyn grapples with the line between justice and retribution.
Though it echoes themes from films like The Brave One and Sicario, Eye for an Eye offers a fresher take by spotlighting a woman torn not only between violence and law, but between her former ideals and the brutal world she now inhabits.
Critics have praised the film’s realism, moral complexity, and Jolie’s unflinching portrayal of a grieving mother turned avenger. Some, however, have criticized its third act for descending into slightly formulaic action territory. Still, Jolie's nuanced performance keeps the emotional stakes high, ensuring the audience is never fully comfortable cheering for Evelyn’s methods.
Thematically, the film delves deep into questions of global corruption, the failure of international justice, and the thin line separating grief from obsession. It's a story that feels timely in its critique of systems that protect the powerful while leaving the vulnerable behind.
Although Eye for an Eye ends with Evelyn walking away from the burning wreckage of a cartel compound, bloodied but alive, it leaves several threads intentionally unresolved. A shadowy figure (played in a brief cameo by Riz Ahmed) is seen watching her from a distance — a likely hint at a larger conspiracy still untouched.
In a potential sequel — tentatively titled Eye for an Eye: Reckoning — Evelyn could be forced back into the underworld she helped dismantle, this time facing not only new enemies but international agencies eager to silence her before she exposes deeper, darker truths. As whispers of a global trafficking syndicate tied to world governments surface, Evelyn may have to forge uneasy alliances with old enemies in order to take them down.
Whether a continuation is greenlit or not, Eye for an Eye stands as one of 2025’s most gripping and emotionally charged thrillers — a film where Angelina Jolie reminds us she’s still one of cinema’s most commanding presences when handed the right role.
