Review: Eagle Eye

Defiantly underachieving family ‘black sheep’ Shia LaBeouf (briefly back home for his Air Force officer brother’s funeral) and single mum Michelle Monaghan (whose band geek son is playing for the President in Washington) receive mysterious phone calls from an unseen entity (with the voice of an uncredited Oscar-nominated fire crotch), ordering them to do all manner of crazy, dangerous, and criminal things or else LaBeouf’s and Monaghan’s kid’s lives will be extinguished. This mysterious caller seems to be in possession of just about every form of surveillance technology possible (not to mention screwing with traffic lights and such), so ratting them out to the cops is probably not an option. Billy Bob Thornton plays a glib federal agent who arrests LaBeouf when he fails to heed the caller’s warning to leave his apartment, which has been conveniently filled with terrorist porn. Obviously, Thornton is reluctant to believe the film’s...er, I mean the kid’s wild story. But that’s OK, the caller helps him escape (why frame him in the first place, then? Huh?), and he eventually meets up with Monaghan and they try to team up and work out just what the hell is going on. Somehow the hapless Secretary of Defense Michael Chiklis and LaBeouf’s twin brother are all tied into the film’s conspiracy/central mystery. Thornton and Air Force investigator Rosario Dawson are trailing them, with even less of a clue than our protagonists. William Sadler is LeBeouf’s hardened, disapproving father, whilst Anthony Mackie turns up as an Air Force guy.

 

2008 D.J. Caruso (the watchable “Disturbia”) action-thriller is a completely ridiculous, totally botched mixture of “Enemy of the State”, “Nick of Time”, and “WarGames”. There are so many dopey ideas in here (especially the reveal of the villain, a massively stupid concept that belongs in a far less real world-set film), beginning with the fact that since the villain/s have to go to such extreme and elaborate lengths (not to mention hugely contrived!) to coerce the protagonists into doing their bidding, that one wonders why they couldn’t have come up with something simpler. Oh that’s right, there’d be no movie. Now there’s a nice thought. But why were Monaghan and LaBeouf chosen anyway? Why choose such ‘normal’ people for a really elaborate scheme, it seems to be taking the long way around, if you ask me (That is, why not hire criminals, easier to frame when the fit hits the shan!), though at least LaBeouf’s participation is eventually explained. But still, what if they were killed before completing the mission?

 

Apparently EP Steven Spielberg (usually a pretty smart guy) conceived the idea himself...over a decade ago, the film was meant to be directed by him at one stage. I bet he thought better of it pretty quickly when he realised that his idea came from a momentary alcohol-assisted lapse of judgement. Either that, or he was intending it to be a comedy, a joke Mr. Caruso most certainly is not in on. Still, why would such a savvy and credible guy as Spielberg even agree to be EP on this way overlong, incompetent schlock? Never for a second credible, the wonderfully charismatic and talented Dawson deserves much better than this hi-tech, low IQ disaster. The even more talented Thornton is picking up a nice pay check, whilst leading man LaBeouf isn’t bad, and Monaghan is practically a non-entity, despite being on screen a lot.

 

Extremely noisy, frenetic, but totally empty-headed, often incoherent, and elaborately stupid. The screenplay was written by a whopping four people; John Glenn, Travis Wright, Hillary Seitz, and Dan McDermott. It’s a shame that Spielberg’s “Minority Report” ‘think tank’ weren’t involved in the screenwriting process, they’d throw the whole stupid thing out and start over. Meanwhile, after ripping off “Rear Window” in “Disturbia” (albeit a slight improvement over the original in regards to sheer entertainment, if you ask me), and trying his hand at ‘wrong man’ plotting here ala “North by Northwest”, one wonders if Caruso’s got a boner for Hitchcock or if he’s just a plagiarist, ala Brian De Palma (“Body Double”, “Dressed to Kill”, “Obsession”). One of the worst big-budget popcorn movies in quite a while. Watch “Enemy of the State” again instead, it does everything this film does, only...successfully.

 

Rating: D