The machine is self-aware... sort of. Eagle Eye is a straightforward thriller whose chase-and-smash narrative belies some clever political commentary, and eventually derails everything with hilarious, Terminator-esque aplomb.
The film opens with the U.S. military instigating a shady assassination attempt on a suspected terrorist somewhere in the Middle East. The Secretary General (Michael Chiklis) isn't too sure they have the right baddie, and their intelligence tells them that, yep, they probably don't. However, the president gives the OK, and in a stunning display of fake movie technology (mini spy planes, secret cameras with stunning accuracy) they move in for the kill and blow everyone up. I had no idea the U.S. military was this effective.
The film then turns to Jerry (Shia LaBeouf), a young drifter working at a copy store. He gets a call that his twin brother — a brilliant air force pilot and their parents' favourite son — has died in an accident. Jerry returns home from the funeral to find his apartment full of ammonium nitrate and assorted military gear. His cellphone rings and a woman tells him that he has 30 seconds before the FBI bursts through his door.
They do exactly that, and Jerry is arrested and brought before a "special terrorist task force" agent (Billy Bob Thorton, playing his usual grumpy self). Meanwhile, Rachel (Michelle Monaghan), a young attorney and single mom, has just sent her young son off on a school band trip. She decides to go out for the night to drink with her girlfriends, when she also gets a mysterious call — leave, hop in the Porsche down the street and drive or your son's dead.
Jerry gets another of what will soon be a whole lot of phone calls (hopefully he has a good plan) leading him to escape from the FBI. And in spectacular fashion, too — leaping off of buildings and racing between train cars. He catches up with Rachel in the Porsche and they take off in, admittedly, a pretty amazing sequence of car chases that destroys a dealer's worth of automobiles. Traffic lights change magically, and the voice on the phone has an uncanny ability to mathematically predict, to the second, how to manoeuvre the car.
Up until this point, Eagle Eye is an entertaining action flick. Who is the puppeteer playing with Jerry and Rachel? What is it all leading up to? Faster than you can say "Tron meets The Patriot Act," the not-so-slow reveal is one of supercomputers and machine guns with a hint of American pride. Despite the fishy politics — a blend of liberal criticism and jingoistic claptrap, if you can believe it — Eagle Eye is a satisfying, if muddled, action flick.
