Big Brother keeps awfully busy in Eagle Eye, a shrill, far-fetched thriller about a slacker whose every move is suddenly choreographed by high-tech forces beyond his control.
Reuniting Shia LaBeouf with his Disturbia director, D.J. Caruso, the film owes a tip of the microchip to 1983’s WarGames — just as their previous collaboration was an update of Hitchcock’s Rear Window — but this time around the imitation is less flattering.
Even those who surrender all disbelief at the door will be hard-pressed not to smirk at some of the wildly improbable plotting that keeps threatening to derail the visual escapism, energetically orchestrated by Caruso and editor Jim Page.
Tired plot
Originally a hypothetical concept by executive producer Steven Spielberg about what might happen if our increasingly pervasive technology would one day turn on us, the idea has been fleshed out over the past few years by several writers, including Dan McDermott, John Glenn and Travis Adam Wright, and Hillary Seitz.
The result has strangers Jerry Shaw (LaBeouf) and Michelle Monaghan’s Rachel Holloman being pulled into a high-tech vortex for unknown reasons, controlled by a highly persuasive female voice on a cellphone.
In short order, Shaw, whose identical twin, an air force public relations officer, was killed in a car accident, and Holloman, a single mum who may never see her 8-year-old son alive again if she doesn’t follow orders, find themselves labelled terrorists, pursued by the Pentagon and the FBI.
Tapping into Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Much as well as 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film starts off promisingly, with some terrific set pieces, including an awe-inspiring sequence set in a scrapyard manned by gigantic, remote-controlled, metal-crushing cranes.
Like any thriller, the action must be calibrated, with a ticking-clock element that ratchets up the tension.
Unfortunately, Eagle Eye proves to be as tightly coiled as a Slinky, and for all their running around, LaBeouf and the normally engaging Monaghan are stuck with characters who aren’t lively and, more problematic, fail to spark the requisite chemistry.
At least Billy Bob Thornton manages to impart a little spontaneity to the mechanical dialogue as the FBI agent on their trail.
