Eagle Eye Movie Review

Eagle Eye is a techno action thriller starring Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan as two hapless people caught up in a conspiracy so immense and so complex that it quickly strains credulity. Fortunately there are enough car chases and explosions to make one forget all that.

Shia LaBeouf is Jerry, a twenty something slacker who works in a copy store and lives hand to mouth in a dingy apartment. He arrives at his apartment one day, soon after finding out that someone has deposited three quarters of a million dollars in his usually depleted bank account, to find enough terrorist paraphernalia there to commit several 9/11s. Then Jerry gets a call on his cell phone. A mysterious female voice tells him to start running. Jerry hesitates and quickly finds himself in the hands of the FBI, in the form of Bill Bob Thornton as Agent Tom Morgan.

Meanwhile Michelle Monaghan as a harried single mom named Rachel is informed on her cell phone by the same female voice to proceed to a parked Porsche and await further orders lest her son, now on a field trip to Washington to play in a children's orchestra, be killed.

Naturally Jerry and Rachel are soon thrown together and are told to do things by the female voice that are both dangerous and puzzling. All the while they are pursued by Agent Morgan who is just as in the dark as they are about what is going on. There are some twists and turns and eventually all is revealed.

Keeping the gentle reader from too much spoilage restrains the humble reviewer from going too much into the nature of the conspiracy behind the female voice. However, it can be said that the reach of the conspiracy sometimes strains credulity. It can control everything from subway trains to traffic lights in real time and uses surveillance cameras and GPS tracking systems in cell phones to be all seeing and all knowing, also in real time.

Another thing. The conspiracy in Eagle Eye is proof positive that people in movies do not themselves go to movies. Otherwise they would not do the things they do that get them into trouble. Midway through Eagle Eye, the movie viewer will know what is meant by this.