"Eagle Eye" (2008) - Movie Review

How can the director of a much poignant, composed and matured film like “The Salton Sea” give two successive films of pure preposterous fest? With his previous year annoying “Disturbia”, D.J. Caruso casts Shia LaBeouf again in what should have been a worst Michael Bay film. There is always some one watching, hearing and laboriously following the sites, mails and blogs we visit over the internet. This paranoid is a valid one and I definitely have that feeling of being constantly watched.

Apart from the effect of film influences, I feel the regular civilian data would be boring and clichéd for the security personnel sipping coffee and eating junk food at 12 AM would fancy him off for finding the possible culprit. This paranoia was used as a plot device for the brilliantly executed “Enemy of the State” which was thrilling and more thoughtful in this genre. In “Eagle Eye” the epidemics of every single one in United States carrying a transmitter and self bugged devices of cell phone, music players and laptop indeed becomes the corner stone factor to move the plot. “Eagle Eye” though riding that possible wave jumps into the jaws of ridicule, insane, insulting and clichéd to the clichéd tradition in thrillers.

Granted that I am an admirer of the “Indiana Jones…” series but when the film attempts to put reality into that, it tips over the category. In “Eagle Eye”, two strangers are put together to follow the order from a voice of a woman over the phone. The voice controls traffic lights, cell phones, banners, neon bulbs, train, flights, tooth paste, condoms..ok the last two is my two cents in mocking but hey there is a possibility if a sequel comes called “Crazy Eyes”. The thing is this; Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) a “copy associate” in a store comes back from his army twin brother’s funeral. He comes back to his dingy apartment to find it filled with explosives and the ultra sophisticated modern warfare instruments. A call comes to threaten giving the precise timings to exit the place in order to escape as the FBI is closing in. Now why when an expert over phone or in person in films comes with a precise calculated but rounded off number for seconds? I can understand minutes but why not say “You have 23 seconds and 10 milliseconds to walk away”?

Ultimately Jerry would be interrogated with a tough good agent (Billy Bob Thornton) and then by his brother’s air force officer (Rosario Dawson) which would drive him to follow the voice commands to be clubbed with another victim of voice, a single mother Rachel (Michelle Monaghan) with her son Sam (Cameron Boyce) used as the threatening factor. If they act upon fear of life and run through around bazillion cars, trucks and people, the trained FBI and police go nuts along with it.

Yes the suspense of who and why are they doing it will be answered with further preposterous plots which would only make you look the watch. Considering the genre of thriller and action, there is a minimal expectancy of logics but action scenes are expected to be choreographed pumping adrenaline forgetting the sham of screenplay. And they bring on totally misplaced close up shots of cars and buses crashing. We are wondering what the clever thing the central characters did to escape or what is the control “god” voice has in hand to make it interesting to watch for what will be the next move to press them forward towards whatever the mission is.

For people who still want to see “Eagle Eye”, please skip this paragraph and come back to read it after going through with it. The voice in the end is actually a super computer “ARIA” (remember V.I.K.I from “I, Robot”) wanting to replace the president since he omitted an abort recommendation in capturing a terrorist in civilian circumstances. Jerry’s brother Ethan found it out and he got killed by one of the induced accidents by ARIA. If it is so powerful in formulating its targets and disobeying commands, why does it need an “unlock” for it to go ahead with the assassinations? Yes I know logic is the least I should expect out of this film but the extremities in going for reality in all wrong way purports this fallacy to be questioned, of course in vain since you have lost the couple of hours of your life to mediocrity of Hollywood.