Monday, January 05, 2009

Eagle Eye

Eagle Eye

This high tech thriller is both fun and frustrating at the same time. There are truly some amazing action scenes. Yet, the movie goes to great lengths to make the entire assassinate plot as convoluted as possible.

To explain the movie would give away one of the big plot twists, and there are a few minor twists here and there. Some of these twists don’t make sense, but the action scenes carried us along so some of us will not think about the plot holes. And, once the big reveal comes in the middle of the story, you’ll be asking yourself many questions that movie never answers itself.

The idea comes from the mind of Steven Spielberg, but he wasn’t able to direct the movie. (He was a producer.) However, you can see certain aspects of the modern Spielberg tone is all over the script and somewhere there is a message in the movie. That message is lost in the complexity of the action and plot.

Shia LaBeouf, a Spielberg favorite it seems, does an evenhanded job playing the lead character. Shia is very restrained in his role, when you compare him to his role in Transformers. Michelle Monaghan does a reasonable job in her role as well. And I was surprised to see Michael Chiklis play something other than The Thing or a corrupt cop in this movie.

The movie works for about the first hour and then starts to come apart as the movie goes on. And the scriptwriters continue to make the more and more crazy. By the end, you’ll say, “What the hell just happened?”

The movie is far from being a terrible movie. With nice-looking action scenes, you can somewhat forgive the oversight in the writing department, but not by much.

Grade: C

6 comments:

  1. I don't know about you but I was rooting for the Cyclops-Bot by the end of the movie.

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  2. I wanted the robot to win too! (Though there is an alt-ending too where it survived)

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  3. I didn't turn out anything like what I expected, and I hated the whole idea of the robot. Billy Bob Thornton was the best thing about the whole movie, though his character's role in the movie was so predictable. That little kid with the freckles was annoying(ly cute).

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  4. Billy Bob's role was very limited, but the trailers imply differently.

    Oh, man that little child was annoying.

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  5. You know the part I hated the most... the part where they sent the shark back in time to fight Napoleon at Waterloo.

    (Can you tell how ridiculous this movie sounds to me now?)

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  6. There's always Eagle Eye II

    You know, I think this movie could have worked as a season long prime time show. To fleshed out story

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