Eagle Eye (2008)

I mean dude, like common, there should be some moderation in exaggerating your plot, if you are not intending to make a comedy movie.I mean listening to a digital (recorded) voice that knows answer to all Your questions and have the answers and protocol of all odds, is that aliens we are dealing with? I mean oh my goodness! The leading roles transformation was not any less exaggerated! From a student to a top notch professional who had extreme experience in handling the guns and... eyes rolling up!I Didn't even got a chance to pay attention to acting and performances!I guess the performance were not as bad as the story line. Also I give some credits to the camera as it created a semi- exciting movie.

Not Big on Ideas, but its Central Thesis is certainly a Big Idea. So Big in Fact that it has become a Cliché of Modern Paranoia. With its Roots in many a Sci-Fi Books and Cinema. Here in the form of a Super Computer, the Thesis is Technology Run Amok. The Story is Told so many times because it is Compelling, Scary, and can be Found in the Headlines. Almost.This is a Big Budget, Over Baked, Simplified Version of said Events that is Light on Philosophy and Heavy-Handed on just about Everything Else. The Cast is Better than the Script that is Outrageously Over-Done on all levels. From the Get-Go Suspension of Disbelief has Trouble Taking Hold.But, No Worries. The Pace is Fast and Frantic, the SFX Outstanding, and the Screen is Frame-Filled with High-Tech, Explosions, Car Crashes, and Mayhem Beyond Belief. It Actually has the Opposite Effect of its Intent. It is made to make You Think, but it acts more like a Comatose Inducement. The Mind Numbs and Thinking is Optional, in Fact it is Not Recommended.Overall, it's Popcorn Paranoia. Worth a Watch for its Entertainment Value and Slick Production, made for Drones and the Dumbed Down, but Despite the Weight of this Glossy Thing, the Message somehow makes it Point. Again, just to Remind Us that the Implication of the Thesis is Not Going Away anytime soon.

An engaging premise. You know the little voice that gives you driving directions from your GPS in the car? "Turn left in two hundred yards." "Approaching destination." Well, imagine that the little voice controls all the electronically transmitted orders to automated devices. I know it sounds terrifying but it needn't be all that bad. In this flick, Shia LaBeouf is astounded when his ATM shows a deposit of three quarters of a million dollars and spews it out into his hands and all over the Chicago sidewalk.Naturally, the beneficence of the little voice is an illusion, because its ends are to enable terrorists to take over the world, or destroy a city, or force everyone to listen to twelve-tone music, or something. The design is to force LaBeouf and his accomplice, Michelle Monaghan, to see that the terrorists get hold of a new explosive, so powerful that a chunk the size of a pinhead will -- I don't know, do things that are just plain distasteful. It enlists LaBeouf and Monaghan by saying in a cheerful voice through whatever device is available -- a cell phone, a traffic sign -- things like, "You have four seconds to exit the car before your baby is decapitated." That's what I call an imaginative premise and great things could have been done with it. But great things aren't done with it. It deteriorates in a few minutes into another novating action movie. The first high speed car chase takes place twenty minutes into the film. It seems to last forever. Never in the history of civilization has there been so much destruction wrought upon cars. They don't merely bump into one another, as at an amusement park, but they roll over ten times and disintegrate into thin slabs of metal mixed with mechanical junk. Cars are squashed by masses of scrap iron. They're picked up by automated cranes and dropped into Lake Michigan. The writers must hate cars.The human characters have far more endurance. They're practically superhuman. LaBeouf leaps out of a ten-story window, bounces off a tin roof far below, and lands on an I-beam over the subway tracks, and there's not a bruise on him. He's not even out of breath. And when he and Monaghan fling themselves into a mass of polluted water, we see them the next morning, and they look better than you and I do the next morning. After the dunking, the splashing, the swimming, the crawling out onto the mud, the hauling of themselves up onto the dock, Monaghan's hair is perfectly groomed. Her false eyelashes have stayed with her loyally throughout the ordeal.I couldn't watch the whole mess. I mean, there's a limit. Whatever happened to good solid Hollywood movies? Where did it all go? (Sob.)

Eagle Eye is a techno-thriller that is only half successful. The technology is present, but the thrills are undeniably absent. No amount of fancy-looking computers, chase scenes, and creepy voices from cell phones can make up for a soulless story.I was really excited about Eagle Eye when I saw the trailer for it last year, but for some reason I never went to the theatre to see it. I love Michelle Monaghan, and Shia LaBeouf seemed like he would be well- suited for this kind of movie. Well, now that I have seen it, I feel fortunate that I watched it in my own home for free instead of paying good money to be disappointed. How can a movie with this much action be, well, boring?The biggest problem with Eagle Eye is that the viewer is never given a reason to be invested in the story. You see Shia go to his brother's funeral at the very beginning of the movie, and then there is maybe two minutes dedicated to Michelle and her son. And then after that, we are supposed to be willing to accept that they would go through all of this for those reasons. It doesn't work. I was never convinced that I should care about what was happening. All the action in the world will not help a movie if it can not make that basic connection between the characters and the audience.As for the plot, it was so unoriginal and implausible that it warrants little mention. It certainly did not make the movie any more interesting. This kind of thing has been seen much too often, and I am a little surprised that the filmmakers would think that it would be sufficient. I will admit that a few of the set-pieces were cool, but there was nothing amazing or new. This could have been a made-for-TV movie with a much smaller budget and cheaper actors, and it would have been just as effective. It is not that Eagle Eye is bad, per se, it just doesn't offer anything to justify being made. Or bought.