‘Eagle Eye’ a statement on technology at its worst
”
Eagle Eye
”
starring Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan and Billy Bob
Thornton
Imagine a world in which government officials are constantly
listening in on people’s conversations and where the President is
willing to use faulty intelligence information to take aim at
anyone who might be a bad guy. Okay, so it’s not hard to imagine
since President Bush has been in office for eight years. But the
world created by writers John Glenn and Travis Wright takes things
to the extreme in
”
Eagle Eye.
”
‘Eagle Eye’ a statement on technology at its worst
“Eagle Eye” starring Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan and Billy Bob Thornton
Imagine a world in which government officials are constantly listening in on people’s conversations and where the President is willing to use faulty intelligence information to take aim at anyone who might be a bad guy. Okay, so it’s not hard to imagine since President Bush has been in office for eight years. But the world created by writers John Glenn and Travis Wright takes things to the extreme in “Eagle Eye.”
In the beginning of the film, military men have their sights set on a possible terrorist somewhere in the Middle East. They can’t be sure they have the right man and facial recognition software only guarantees a 50 percent match. Though Defense Secretary Callister (Michael Chiklis) warns against an air strike against the men at what seems to be a funeral, the President (Madison Mason) says to go ahead with the bombing.
Cut to Chicago. Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) is a loser who works in a copy shop, gambles his friends out of money and avoids paying his rent. When his twin brother dies, he returns home for the first time in years and his father makes it clear that Jerry has potential he has never fulfilled. A Stanford dropout, he gave it up to travel the world while his brother graduated at the top of his class at the Air Force Academy and was a model military man before a car accident killed him.
This is perhaps the first role LaBeouf has had where he tries to distance himself from his “Even Stevens” goofiness, a Disney Channel kid’s show he starred in for several years before moving on to the big screen. Even when he played Mutt Williams in the latest Indiana Jones film, the performance came across as trite and as though he were trying too hard to be the same old goofball. Here LaBeouf grows up and grows a somewhat scraggly beard. Still, he is most at home on screen when he is making a funny crack a la “Even Stevens.”
Also in Chicago, Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) prepares to send her son off to Washington, D.C., to a band camp. He appears to be 10 or 11 years old and plays the trumpet. Rachel sends him off at the train station and spends a night out on the town with friends.
The movie really gets moving when Jerry makes a deposit at an ATM and suddenly finds he has a few hundred thousand more dollars than he should. When he gets to his apartment he discovers a huge cache of weapons and other deadly chemicals. His phone rings and a tinny female voice tells him to get out of his apartment before the FBI arrives. Shaw, confused by mysterious weapons and the unidentified woman giving him directions, hesitates.
Soon he is in the custody of Agent Thomas Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton), who believes the weapons are somehow tied to Shaw’s dead twin brother. Zoe Perez (Rosario Dawson) also wants to question Shaw as the Air Force has questions about his dead brother. Before things get too far along in the investigation, Morgan is called from the room and Shaw is given his phone call. The mysterious female voice returns.
At the same time, Rachel has also received a call from the mysterious voice that threatens the life of her son if she doesn’t follow directions. Rachel finds herself in a black SUV outside of a train station.
Though the movie is mostly one long car chase, the filmmakers are making a point about how thoroughly technology has invaded our lives and what can happen if it is used for wrong. Many of the ways the mystery caller communicates with Rachel and Jerry are unbelievable at best, but it’s something we could imagine in the near future.
The movie also makes points about how willing people can be to comply with an authoritative voice – especially when they feel threatened. It is reminiscent of the old psychology tests when researchers asked participants to administer shocks to another person they couldn’t see during an experiment. People continued to give shocks past a level that would kill most people when reassured by an authority. Of course, no one was really shocked because the test was to see how compliant participants would be even if they knew they were hurting someone.
Jerry and Rachel are the main participants in this odd experiment and they don’t even understand what the ultimate goal of their journey is as they head first to Indianapolis and then to Washington, D.C.
Once it becomes clear who the caller is, it all makes sense. Unfortunately once viewers know who is orchestrating this mysterious plot the movie begins to feel a lot less fun and a lot more like a lecture on the worries of too much technology. We can buy into the concern of government officials that act without regards to the reliability of intelligence, but to think all the techno stuff we love could be evil – that’s just too scary.
