An exciting but profoundly dumb technological thriller, D.J. Caruso’s Eagle Eye tests the limits of just how dumb a film can be and still get away with it.
And it very nearly does get away with it: the director keeps everything moving at such a breakneck pace that we rarely have a moment to reconsider past events after the plot specifics are revealed, or even, for that matter, fully comprehend what is currently happening on the screen.
There’s a level of craft at work here that I can appreciate, but also an unforgivable level of incompetence that ultimately wins out.
In 2007, Caruso paired with star Shia Labeouf for Disturbia, a teenage ripoff of Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Just a year later and both director and star have (seemingly) matured with Eagle Eye, which is less of a Hitchcock ripoff, and more of a cyber-terror version of North by Northwest.
Labeouf stars as Jerry West, a chop shop clerk who returns from the funeral of his twin brother to find $750,000 in his bank account and a cadre of weapons in his apartment. He’s quickly seized by the FBI, but not before he gets a phone call from a mysterious female voice (who isn’t credited in the cast, though she sounds so familiar – Julianne Moore, or maybe Diane Lane) that tells him to go on the run.
Meanwhile, single mother Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) gets a similar phone call from the same woman, who tells her that if she doesn’t comply, the train her son is on will be derailed. Soon Rachel and Jerry are on the lam together, forced to comply in some vague terrorist plot that isn’t fully revealed until the end of the film.
On their trail are FBI agents played by Billy Bob Thornton and Ethan Embry, while Air Force official Zoe Perez (Rosario Dawson) investigates the circumstances of the death of Jerry’s twin brother.
The movie effectively strings us along for an hour or so; we don’t know what’s going on, but everything is fast-paced and suspenseful enough to keep us on the edge of our seats. We’re wondering who the bad guys are, waiting for that big reveal when everything clicks into place and, maybe, just maybe, it will pay off in spectacular fashion.
The big reveal comes in at the end of the second act, and while it’s a mighty interesting one (and one of the best things about the movie), everything doesn’t click.
Armed with the knowledge of who the terrorists are, everything falls apart, as nothing that happened in the first two acts makes sense, and nothing that happens in the third will either.
This is an omnipotent enemy that strikes down a man in the middle of the desert with electrical cables, but crafts a needlessly, ridiculously complex plan that relies solely on these two strangers completing a variety of unnecessary tasks.
There’s a scene at the end when the enemy needs to kill Jerry, but instead of doing it by themselves they try to force Rachel into it, even though they just killed someone in the same exact spot not five minutes prior. I’m being vague to try and avoid spoiling the major plot point, but you get the picture. The level of stupidity here is insulting.
Mostly because Caruso has crafted a film that takes place in the real world and want you to think. This isn’t escapist entertainment like Journey to the Center of the Earth, where you can turn your mind off and not worry about the logic. No, we have to use our minds to confront Eagle Eye, and the more we do so, the worse it gets.
Labeouf was no James Stewart in Disturbia, and he’s certainly no Cary Grant here, but he’s capable enough and even likable at times. The rest of the cast, including costar Monaghan, is effective though no one stands out. William Sadler, who has a few lines as Jerry’s father, is wasted in an underdeveloped subplot.
Eagle Eye is a shade below similar films Enemy of the State and Live Free or Die Hard; while neither of those were bastions of intellect, they didn’t seem this dumb.
Caruso is a competent director and has turned this awful script into a better film than it has any right to be, but there are some glaring flaws, like an early chase scene that is so confusingly shot in close-ups, that I had no idea who was chasing who or who had crashed into what when they cut to a wide shot.
Still, there are plenty of worse ways to spend two hours.