Opening Day: 1 October 2008

Synopsis:

In the fast-paced race-against-time-thriller "Eagle Eye" Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan are two strangers who become the pawns of a mysterious woman they have never met, but who seems to know their every move. Realizing they are being used to further her diabolical plot, they must work together to outwit the woman before she has them killed.

Movie Review:

Hatched from an idea by Steven Spielberg, "Eagle Eye" is another post-911 claustrophobic, techie thriller that lingers far too long than you expect it to be.

Spielberg and D.J. Caruso’s favourite leading man-boy, Shia LaBeouf is Jerry Shaw, a man whose twin brother, an Air Force officer is killed in a bus accident. Before we actually gets to know more about Jerry, he is mysteriously wanted by the FBI (under very suspicious circumstances) and running alongside with a woman named Rachel (the wonderful Michelle Monaghan).

Command by a 'female voice' over the handphone (or what the Americans preferred to call it, cellphones), Jerry and Rachel must follow closely to what the voice wants them to do or risk having their family or themselves killed.

The synopsis sells it as a 'race-against-time' thriller and it isn’t shunning away from it given that there are lots of running and enough bombastic action sequences to blow your mind and ear drums away. It seems like D.J. Caruso’s visual skills can give Michael Bay a run for his money but the shaky camera moves might induce a serious bout of motion-sickness. The pacing is frantic and relentless and Caruso expects you to buy that the two strangers without any proper training from the military or FBI can manage to rob two armed security guards in a stickup or defeat a veteran FBI agent. (Man, those years in National Service seem like a waste)

Although the setting is not clearly defined, it’s definitely not set in the far away future, McDonalds is still emblazed with a capital 'M' and no flying cars are spotted. In "Eagle Eye", technology has advanced to a stage whereby anything in the city can be artificially controlled. Traffic lights, satellite, surveillance camera, machinery whatever is there on the street or above it. Perhaps it can be done even now, I don’t know. Anyway as the plot thickens, the audience is supposed to believe that two strangers are able to penetrate into the deepest area of the Pentagon as command by a highly intelligent system dubbed 'Aria'. 9-11 actually happened so what do you expect?

This is clearly not a movie that makes much sense, intelligence or creativity when the mystery unraveled. At least "Die Hard 4" has a more plausible scenario or even "I, Robot" which conveniently tucked every preposterous plot-holes into the future world.

With Spielberg as executive producer, the production values on the other hand are faultless. Car crashes and lots of elegantly-built sets with enhancements from Sony Imageworks ruled the movie with ease. Other supporting characters such as Rosario Dawson, Michael Chiklis, Billy Bob Thornton did a fair job going through the motions in this unbelievable script despite their limited screentime.

In some ways, "Eagle Eye" has a story structure like Spielberg’s much more superior "Minority Report" combined with some leftover ideas from "I, Robot" and even the recent Pixar animated "Wall-E". But unfortunately, here it’s just a bloated thriller with enough elaborate explosions and heart-pounding setups to make your admit ticket worthwhile.

Movie Rating:



(Suspend your beliefs and go for the break-neck thrills)

Review by Linus Tee