Eagle Eye

Making a good technological thriller is a notoriously tricky task; few other genre’s are shamefully responsible for quite so many cinematic atrocities. A frequent problem is that these films are usually plagued by implausible overly complicated plots based around one simple theme, namely what if technology turned evil. Time is also often unkind to such movies, as today’s cutting edge gadgets and science becomes redundant history at an increasingly rapid pace. Watching people in old movies marvel at lasers or explain what a microchip is can be an embarrassing ordeal. It’s like seeing cavemen congratulate themselves on inventing the wheel. I cautiously avoided Eagle Eye when it strolled through cinemas, but as it emerges on DVD I find myself inescapably confronted.

Supposedly based on Steven Spielberg’s first original story since ‘The Goonies’, I was left uninspired by Eagle Eye’s generic premise. Two strangers lose control of their lives to a mysterious voice on a phone that uses an eerie power over technology to manipulate them into doing its bidding. There’s little originality in such a literal representation of the well established cliché that our lives are ‘controlled by technology’. The power to change street signs or remotely operate heavy machinery is unlikely to inspire the desired fear and awe in a savvy technology encrusted audience. These concepts already felt tired and rehearsed even in their mid 90’s heyday.

Unfortunately the film’s cast is just as underwhelming as its lacklustre story. Lead actor Shia LaBeouf is a rising star who has grabbed leading roles in Transformers and the latest Indiana Jones movie. Even Steven Spielberg has an admitted if frankly inexplicable admiration for him. I will admit that LaBeouf’s ‘talents’ are unique. I can’t think of many other actors who can be both painfully melodramatic and devoid of any emotion at the same time. He seems to approach every role with the same combination of flaccid wit and sullen agitation. LaBeouf’s label as the ‘next Tom Hanks’ does a huge disservice to the legacy of a great talent and massively overestimates the appeal of LaBeouf’s ‘everyman’ qualities.

LaBeouf’s co-star Billy Bob Thornton has more screen presence and accomplish as an actor, though his most recent achievement has been to offend the entire nation of Canada with just one disastrously obnoxious CBC Radio interview. The actor apparently took objection to being called an actor whilst pretending to be just a musician. With the myth of his charisma finally exposed there’s really little appeal left in watching Billy Bob play a stereotypical surly FBI agent.

Eagle Eye isn’t unbearably awful; it’s just average and unexceptional. The plot holds very few surprises and hinges largely on the fact that LaBeouf’s character has an identical twin brother. Such a ludicrous cliché threatens to collapse the films fragile credibility into a big pile of silly. The film might actually have been more entertaining if it had been worse. Sometimes it’s better to be memorably terrible than just mediocre and forgettable...