Eagle Eye
Paranoia is rampant in today's world, where the media constantly warns us to trust no one and live in fear that the government is spying on us and fabricating information to further a dangerous agenda. While such extremism is a heavy dose of overkill, the current landscape of the world provides grand fodder for a heroically-minded cinematic thriller. Enter Eagle Eye, a fast-paced yarn about people being forced to risk their lives in service of maintaining control of national security. Taking place in the early days of 2009, the movie hopes to be a topical tale ripped straight from tomorrow's headlines. The intentions are noble, but the end result is a mess, mixing a hokey message about the dangers of defence with high-octane silliness.
The story follows confident underachiever Jerry Shaw (Shia Labeouf), a young man with no direction and no plans for his future. Jerry's life takes a sad turn when his soldier twin brother turns up dead, but the loss of his sibling is only the beginning of Jerry's problems. Following the funeral, he returns home to his cramped apartment to find the place filled with firearms, explosives, and fake passports. Before Jerry can fully digest this discovery, his phone rings and a voice on the other end instructs him that the FBI will arrive at his home in a few seconds and he has to escape.
It isn't long before Jerry meets Rachel (Michelle Monahan), a single mother who has found herself in a similar predicament. Constantly harassed by the mysterious voice, Jerry and Rachel go on the run in hopes of finding the truth. The voice on the phone continues to be a powerful force, as it can seemingly control anything that is electronically based, from traffic lights to heavy machinery. This comes into play in a massive chase sequence in which Jerry and Rachel try to escape the police and FBI. The sequence is long and truly epic in scope, but the frantic camerawork and choppy editing cause all of the action to flash by in a blur. There are few opportunities to appreciate the chaotic mayhem at work, serving to transform the sequence into a lot of ineffective noise.
Initially, the story has some dramatic pull, because the mystery promises a potentially powerful payoff. The characters are never engaging enough to allow for a solid emotional investment in their plight, but at least the twisted, gnarled plot may lead to an absorbing conclusion. Unfortunately, when the big reveal arrives, it is so disappointingly uninteresting, so astonishingly silly, that the movie instantly loses all credibility. Just as it attempts to reach impressively ambitious heights, it plummets to the depths of a bad joke. This narrative stumble exposes the limply contrived elements of the plot, rendering the final half hour of the movie a complete bore. Prior to the big reveal, there is a sense of hope that the story is travelling in an exciting and unexpected direction. But once the surprise is divulged, the movie grinds to a halt just as it attempts to pick up speed.
The movie does feature a decent cast, ranging from leads Shia Labeouf and Michelle Monahan to supporting players Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson, but each of the actors are constrained by the messy plot to the point of suffocation. They are given no room to breathe, instead being forced to play the part of simple pawns in a silly chess game. No one in the movie ever feels like they are influencing an outcome, probably because the ominous voice on the phone is pulling every string remotely. The characters are merely pushed into situations that will inevitably be solved by the voice, rendering their participation in the story nearly pointless.
Director DJ Caruso and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski have chosen to bathe the film in sickly shades of blue and yellow, in an effort to depict a grimier version of our current world, one in a constant state of deterioration. The visual style quickly grows stale, its unsuccessful attempts to desperately set a tone only drawing more attention to how strikingly the story ultimately misses its mark.
The intentions of Eagle Eye intrigue, but the execution is so clumsy that the movie's ultimate goal is never reached. It wants to be a serious story hard-wired to the current public consciousness, but ultimately settles for being a goofy action-thriller removed from reality. The threat located in the story's epicentre is never scary or intimidating, and as the layers of plot are peeled back, the movie quickly loses its ability to entertain. Once the element of surprise is sacrificed, the movie has nowhere to go but down. Paranoia is a sharp subject for an action-thriller, especially one so deeply concerned with the current state of the world, but the movie needs to infect us with its fear. When the story is so awkwardly constructed that the fear fails to materialize, the only sense of uneasiness stems from witnessing such insipid alarmism.
