Movie review: Eagle Eye

Open the iPod docking station doors, Hal.

by John P. Meyer

My goal in writing a review of Eagle Eye is to use the word "insouciant" - in context - somewhere in the piece.

If this sounds contrived, it shapes up to be far less than the level of contrivance on display during the almost two hours of screen time it takes this bastard conceptual pastiche of Hitchcock and Kubrick to fully unravel. And unravel, finally, it does.

Not that there aren't some interesting characters at play in this breathless, chaotic, technophobic scavenger hunt of a thriller:

Shia LeBouf (whom Hollywood seems determined to turn into the next major male action hero) stars as Jerry Shaw, a humble copy boy (make that "copy associate") at a Kinko's-like establishment. Unfortunately for him (it turns out), Jerry has an identical twin brother who's enmeshed in an ultra-secret government spying operation involving autonomous security computers and Big Brother-worthy surveillance systems. (Which in this case would be more accurately referred to as Big Sister.)

Michelle Monaghan (late of Heartbreak Kid and Gone Baby Gone) co-stars as Rachel Holloman, the other hapless innocent sucked into this web of intrigue and extra-legal derring-do. How fortuitous that she's adept at the handling of the SPAS-12 shotgun - but then maybe that's why she was recruited for the assignment to begin with. Who can say?

On the establishment side of the character playbill we have the lower-key-than-usual Michael Chiklis, who'd better be getting his film career geared up since his starring TV vehicle, The Shield, is gearing down for its final curtain call at the end of this season. Michael plays a rather lackluster U.S. Secretary of Defense named Callister, whose insouciant acceptance of a wildly-off-kilter turn of national security events seems almost Zen-like in its complacency. (There, now that's off my chest.)

Rosario Dawson fills the sensible patent leather pumps of an Air Force field investigator named Zoe Perez. While she doesn't have a lot to show us, character-development-wise, Zoe does succeed in delivering a final debilitating (if totally implausible) blow to the all-seeing, omnipotent villain of the story. (Who - SPOILER ALERT - apparently isn't quite omnipotent, given this outcome.)

Most entertaining among the players is Billy Bob Thornton as an acerbic, relentless Homeland Security operative named Thomas Morgan. This character is better developed on-screen than any of the other supporting ones, only to find himself badly manipulated (by the scripters) in the climactic reel.

Director D.J. Caruso's film (working from a screen story penned by John Glenn, Travis Wright, Hillary Seitz and Dan McDermott - and which plays rather like a plot developed by committee) hurls us at breakneck speed towards some sort of hinted-at high-level terrorist plot to be unleashed on domestic U.S. soil. "Hurls" proves an apt characterization, because the cinematography wallows in the employment of extreme close-ups while the protagonists are engaged in car chases, so that our big picture concept of what's going on never has a chance to gel before some metallic object or other crashes into us. Again and again.

[Methinks director Caruso has a better handle on atmospheric, psychologically-nuanced thrillers than he does on breakneck actioners of the Bourne variety - which this movie is trying hard to be.]

There's a wildly (though unintentionally) humorous set piece involving an airport luggage conveyor belt which has been taken over - along with everything else in creation, from cell phones to construction cranes - by the evil feminine mastermind who's pulling the strings. The most damning plot device of all (in terms of the way this movie regards the intelligence of its audience) involves the repeated spelling out of crucial events as they're occurring - as if the mega-computer brain derives some sort of perverse satisfaction from displaying a countdown to terminal events (via LED) for its stupid human opponents to agonize over.

As mentioned, there's major Hitchcock homage in play here, primarily when it comes to the climax and its resemblance to The Man Who Knew Too Much.

And perhaps that officially makes me The Man Who Said Too Much, so I'll leave the Kubrick reference open to speculation.

(Now, if I can just get my office manager, Hal, to open the dang iPod docking station doors, I'll retrieve my iPod and head for home.)