Echelon Conspiracy (2009)

"Max Peterson" (Shane West) is a computer expert who just happens to be working on a project in Bangkok when he gets a strange package delivered to his hotel room. Upon opening it he finds a cellphone that gives him some extremely valuable advice that not only helps him make a fortune but also saves his life by diverting him from taking a flight that winds up crashing and leaving no survivors. Needless to say, he considers himself quite lucky. Unfortunately, he soon discovers that the mastermind behind the texts has its own agenda and he is merely a pawn in it—and he is quite expendable. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this movie had quite a bit going for it but it became much too clichéd and predictable toward the end which really hurt this film overall. Even so, Shane West put in a creditable performance as did Tamara Feldman who was definitely easy on the eyes as well. In short, this was a passable movie overall and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

I say this movie is enlightening since it opens the eyes of the viewer to the dangers of mass surveillance (video, computer, cell, etc)On all other points it is completely stupid...1. A computer who can do whatever it wants (supposedly it has some kind of artificial intelligence) and has all the computational power it needs, cannot update itself in secret (noting that the system admin is a complete idiot) and needs to reach to some people through some nice phones, so that it could move to an empty storage house somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in order to make its desired upgrade.2. The main character arrives in Prague, where it gets to a casino and after winning 100000 euros and gaining the attention of the security personnel, it comes back to win the 3000000 euros jackpot... How stupid is that... Like they couldn't see that he was cheating with its phone.3. A sniper and two armed men cannot kill an unsuspecting couple in Prague. Later on, the FBI agents with BMW's have a really hard time keeping up with a Renault Cargo.4. They realize that Echelon does stupid things, but they decide to keep it online and do what it says. 5. In the end, they thought this was not messy enough, so they made agents fight each other.6. The hero saves the day by making the computer find its conscience and notice that it does not keep the rules it needed to keep. So the Intelligent Computer decides that after all this stupid series of events it will shut down and give up, which it does.There are many other lines and scenes which are ridiculous.

Max Peterson (Shane West) is your typical I.T. guy who specializes in bios password protection. Max receives a mysterious phone in the mail that gives him all kinds of useful information via text messages from an unknown source. He is warned not to board a plane that later crashes, is given a hot tip involving the stock market, as well as the winning slot machines at a high end casino. He gets arrested by the FBI because they have been tracking similar cases and all the phone recipients have ended up dead and the FBI and the NSA think there is a national security threat behind the mysterious text messages.For about half he movie it is very watchable and entertaining, when it is revealed that the text messages are coming from a multi-billion dollar U.S. government super computer that has gone bonkers, the movie takes a major dive into unable-to-continue-to-suspend-disbelief-land. The computer, called Echelon, is all knowing and is tapped into every computer system, traffic light, security camera, and phone in the world. The movie basically turns into a low-budget version of the garbage film Eagle Eye, or a cheap knock off of the classic War Games, depending on how badly you want to savage the film.The acting isn't terrible, but it's not stellar by any stretch of the imagination. The action is rather lame and could have been left out almost entirely without hurting the film, particularly the poorly shot car chase scene. There is also a meaningless and half-assed, tacked-on love story that could have easily been dropped without anyone noticing. Oh, and in the end the U.S. government turns out to be bad but the freedom loving ex-communists in the Kremlin turn out to be the saviors of humanity. Who would have known the Russian bear was so cuddly? The extreme stupidity of the final scene cost the film 1/2 star by itself.

What a mistake! So, I was traveling and I downloaded two films from iTunes...One I bought the other I rented... This movie was so awful that I felt horrible for Edward Burns and Ving Rhames...Martin Sheen deserved this movie however. The plot was so obvious and the "danger" was childish and contrived. There was violence, there was the villain...the computer, the love interest, and Mr. Whatshisname...the star. Didn't Kubrick do this same story more than 30 years ago? The rise of the machines and the death of decent screenplay all in about 2 hours...and now I own the damn thing!!! Take your money and buy a couple of slices of pizza and a beer...at least the aftertaste will be more satisfying...