![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() While these elements leave an experience that will always have you guessing as to where the movie is going next, the eventual climax of the film boils down to character rather than plot, and as a result of spotty characterisation, the film eventually falls flat. and for the most part, that is how the movie plays out. Read aloud, the script could easily be interpreted to be a techno-phobe's transcription of a recurring nightmare the government tracking us all on phones, cameras lip-reading us etc. Not much risk-taking is implemented here there are virtually no new ideas of any kind, and the themes present have all been battered to death in countless novels and films that have frankly done the job far more successfully. So despite some similarities, Eagle Eye at least delivers an experience that is refreshing, but at the same time familiar. No, it is neither creatively similar nor anywhere near the same quality. From the trailers I was imagining Eagle Eye to be a cross between The Matrix and Wanted, but it's not not at all. The correct phrasing is “she could probably turn a train into a talking duck,” not “a walking duck.” ( Return to the corrected sentence.I think this is possibly the third film this year that has directly involved a higher power turning 'insufficient funds' into a considerable amount, and while this comparison is valid in a sense, that's where similarities end. 3, 2008: This piece originally misquoted a line spoken by LaBeouf. LaBeouf fails the first question on the action-hero screen test: Do you struggle to command attention when sharing the screen with a computerized voice?Ĭorrection, Oct. In this age of post-steroidal leading men, you don’t need to be Arnold Schwarzenegger to carry a movie, but you do need to have some presence. ( After one of Aria’s remarkable, technology-harnessing stunts, he notes with eyebrows and hackles raised that “she could probably turn a train into a talking duck.” *) But quips alone do not a popcorn-movie star make. Perhaps owing to his start as a child stand-up comic, the one-time Disney Channel star has a facility for delivering post-explosion one-liners. After Transformers and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Eagle Eye feels less like a vehicle for an action hero than the latest in a series of national focus groups to determine LaBeouf’s commercial viability. Though Aria does serve as a handy preview of what the Patriot Act might allow circa 2016, this level of omniscience and omnipotence feels like overkill when used to push around Shia LaBeouf. By placing the menace off-screen, Eagle Eye tantalizes with the prospect that the enemy, once revealed, won’t be dumb. There’s also promise in the disembodied Knight Rider-gone-bad voice that’s commanding our heroes (LaBeouf and Mission: Impossible III’s Michelle Monaghan) to abandon the principles of defensive driving. For example, even as the movie borrows the traffic-light manipulations of Live Free or Die Hard and The Italian Job, its opening chase scene manufactures a few thrills of its own: The pacing, the sound, and the effects are all in the 90 th percentile of such things, and the closing cars-vs.-hooks-in-a-wrecking-yard bit will make for a tremendous set piece in a tie-in video game. While Eagle Eye’s waypoints are so familiar that a game of action-movie bingo wouldn’t last until the end of the first reel-look out for the briefcase with a red digital countdown-it does at least have some gloss around the edges. Caruso is the cuttlefish of directors, content to blend in with his action-movie surroundings rather than conjure an original vision. ![]()
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