Eagle Eye (2008)

What a waste of my time!!!

Great Film overall

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Shortly after the death of his twin brother things start going wrong for Jerry Shaw in a rather strange way. First he gets home and finds his apartment full of weapons; moments later he gets a call for a woman telling him that he is about to be arrested, which he is. When he uses his 'one phone call' he finds himself talking to her again and she gives him instructions to escape. Meanwhile Rachel Holloman also receives a call telling her that her son's train will derail if she doesn't do as she is told. Soon she is united with Jerry and the two are forced to undertake a mission which will take them to the country's centres of power. As they travel they wonder about the woman guiding them; she appears to be able to access anything computerised; phones, traffic lights, all CCTV and even the cranes at a junk yard.It must be said that the plot of this film is rather silly and I'm sure most viewers will have an idea about the identity of the voice directing Jerry and Rachel long before the characters work it out. These details aren't much of a problem as the action moves along at a cracking pace with lots of exciting action from start to finish. This includes car chases with numerous crashes, a chase through an airport baggage handling area and excitement under the Pentagon and in the US Capitol building. Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan are solid as Jerry and Rachel; there are also impressive performances from Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson as the FBI Agent and USAF investigator looking for them. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to anybody looking for some fairly inoffensive brain-in-neutral action; if you are looking for something deep and meaningful look elsewhere.

Incompetent as a thriller, mildly interesting as a political allegory, D. J. Caruso's "Eagle Eye" revolves around ARIIA, a supercomputer designed by the US military. Deciding that the executive branch of the US Government is a threat to national security, and justifying its actions based on Section 216 of the Patriot Act, which allows the circumventing of chains of command, ARIIA begins assassinating government officials.Countless real-life intelligence reports have concluded that the "defence policies" of the United States are in fact the chief causes of blowback, violence, terrorism and threats to US citizens. ARIIA's "revolutionary" acts on behalf of "we the people" are therefore never fully condemned by Caruso. Indeed, ARIIA at one point cites the Declaration of Independence ("whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it"). This is fairly novel for a mainstream thriller."Is it not also permissible to kill a president, Member of Parliament, bureaucrat, or police officer from a democratic regime, if killing is necessary to stop them from harming the innocent?" philosopher Andrew Altman, author of "Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World", wonders. To many, the answer would be no. Killing a Hitler or Gestapo agent to stop the murdering of innocent people is typically deemed permissible. But knocking off a US president in order to stop, say, an invasion of the Philippines or the funding of terrorist cells, is a no-no. The assumption is that only non-violent resistance to these injustices is permissible, and that democratic government agents enjoy special immunity against being killed in self-defence or the defence of others. These democracies, meanwhile, always operate under the assumption that their own violence is permissible. In "Eagle Eye", ARIIA doesn't abide by these hypocrisies, though the film ultimately betrays its convictions. It ends, after-all, with its heroes saving the President of the United States – who in real life is always the chieftain of extralegal executions – from ARIIA's targeted assassinations. Coups, regime changes and murder are wrong, "Eagle Eye" admits, though mostly when directed at first world white dudes."Eagle Eye" was released in 2008, five years before the lid was blown on a global spy-network run primarily by the United States' National Security Agency. Designed for global surveillance, this ARIIA-resembling network intercepts mountains of data, recording most global internet and telecommunications traffic, as well as international traffic flowing via undersea fibre optic cables. Email records, telephone conversations, shopping records, medical records, banking records, internet records, text messages, digital profiles...virtually everything with a digital or electromagnetic footprint is automatically gobbled up by this network. Capable of simultaneously recording and storing every phone-call occurring within entire continents, this network extends across the planet, gathering data and meta-data on millions of ordinary people around the world. It also tracks cellphone locations, can hack cellphone conversations, and is capable of hacking its way into most encrypted consumer products. Such data mining occurs thanks to NSA alliances with major companies (Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Youtube, AOL, Skype etc) and major countries (Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and Israel). The NSA also spies on and collects data stored within the data centres of major corporations, giving it access to the daily habits, thoughts, words and actions of billions. Currently this spy-network has numerous ancillary branches (PRISM, Tempora, Stellar Wind, Dishfire, MUSCULAR, Project 6, Stateroom, ECHELON, CO-TRAVELER), most of which have since changed their names.The NSA has defended its networks, stating that it "stops terrorists", but revelation after revelation has shown that they have no impact on terrorism, and are primarily used to spy on civilians, political activists, diplomats, commercial entities, environmental groups, corporations and global policy makers. The NSA, in short, is in the business of economic espionage, protecting Western mega-corporate, mega-trade and mega-banking interests. "The police are the right arm of corporate power," Jack London wrote in 1902; the NSA now functions the same way. Consider, for example, project OLYMPIA, which exclusively spies on Brazil's ministry of mining and energy. And even when NSA intel is used in "warzones" to kill "terrorists" ("We kill people based on meta-data." - Michael Hayden, NSA director), such extra-legal killings are "validated" via "inference" not "proof". The point? "Eagle Eye's" ARIIA is already a reality. Minus, of course, ARIIA's conflicted sense of morality.6/10 – "Eagle Eye" was loosely based on Isaac Asimov's "All the Troubles of the World".

(37%) A piece made entirely for the average opening weekend cinema goer. The type of person who decides what film to go and watch by the billboard they just drove past, or a 10 second TV spot. Someone who thinks that the critics are way too harsh with the "awesome" transformers movies. The type of person who are far more interested in the popcorn and fizzy drink combo than the actual film itself. People who just want a big bang for every one of their bucks. Folk who always between the "boring talky bits" check their text messages and distract everyone around them with the annoying glow from their phone's screen. And quite frankly if that's you in a nutshell then this is a good watch. In fact you might even deem it awesome, but if that's the case then you likely paid with your ticket using pocket money. With a fair bit of Will Smith's "Enemy of the state" this is a movie most high school students would alter Hitchcock's entire back-catalogue to be more like, ie take out character depth, almost all the tension, subtlety, and just hand over all the action by the bargain bucket load. While this does roll along at a fair old speed, is very watchable, and isn't really what I'd call even near to being terrible, but it still couldn't be more of a hollow, overly produced, and very silly experience even if it tried.

Why can't people write good scripts anymore? In watching this (I was sorry I was watching it) all I could think is this all these people can come up with - completely unbelievable car chases, plot that makes absolutely no sense, technology uses that make absolutely no sense and I could go on. Anyway I won't be wasting my time actually watching this piece of crap all the way through. Life is too short for that. Hollywood - write a good script and bring us something that is believable. If I want fantasy I will rent Shrek. At least it had a good script.