Cribbing ideas and sequences from earlier and better thrillers—such as North by Northwest and Enemy of the State—director D.J. Caruso's noisy, chaotic shoot-'em-up posits the existence of a massive, government-developed supercomputer capable of monitoring and controlling every single electrical device in the country…even traffic lights. Naturally, the operating system develops a glitch that inadvertently sets into motion a fail-safe program intended to assassinate the President and take out much of his cabinet as well. So, it falls to sophomoric underachiever Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) and single mom Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) to short-circuit the plan (literally) after they are set up by the computer to be blamed for the killings. To call Eagle Eye's plot improbable is to call the North Pole chilly: the logical inconsistencies pile atop one another in rapid succession, while the Hitchcockian denouement (admittedly viscerally effective) is full of absurdities. Billy Bob Thornton has a plum role as the FBI agent investigating Jerry's part in the scheme, but Rosario Dawson is wasted as a prim military intelligence officer. Those with a less fastidious taste for plain simple logic may be excited by the action sequences (innumerable car chases, explosions, and shootouts) that are edited so jaggedly as to be incomprehensible, but most others will be disappointed. Not a necessary purchase. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include a 26-minute “making-of” featurette, an “Is My Cell Phone Spying On Me?” featurette (10 min.), a “Shall We Play a Game?” segment featuring director D.J. Caruso chatting with WarGames director John Badham (10 min.), a seven-minute gag reel, a six-minute Washington D.C. location featurette, four minutes of deleted scenes, a “Road Trip” location featurette (3 min.), a brief alternate ending, a photo gallery, and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a ludicrous thriller.] (E. Hulse)
Eagle Eye
DreamWorks, 118 min., PG-13, DVD: $30.99, Blu-ray: $39.99, Dec. 27 Volume 24, Issue 1
Eagle Eye
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