EAGLE EYE (D.J. Caruso). 118 minutes. Opens Friday (September 26). Rating: NN
Eagle Eye is the dumbest movie about earning your dad’s respect to come down the Hollywood poop shoot in quite some time.
Sharing a few strands of DNA with Will Smith’s Enemy Of The State, it stars Shia LaBeouf as an unambitious copy clerk and Michelle Monaghan as a struggling single mom who are blackmailed by a mysterious voice on their cellphones into robbing an armoured truck and smashing up dozens of cars in one of the most confusingly staged chases ever committed to celluloid.
Collateral damage knows no bounds, even at the expense of the film’s twisted internal logic. The anonymous voice needs LaBeouf and Monaghan to accomplish something but repeatedly and unnecessarily forces them to do things that could and should get them killed, or at least hospitalized, all for the sake of a few cinematic thrills.
Director D.J. Caruso is no Tony Scott. He’s not even Michael Bay, although he aspires to be both in this wreckage-strewn mess that plays heavily on contemporary fears of terrorism and Big Brother-style state control.
LaBeouf and Monaghan know how to run and deliver their lines while out of breath, and Billy Bob Thornton is okay if a little waxen as the gruff FBI agent hunting them.
But it’s all wasted on a story that logically should have played out in about seven minutes.
