Monday, October 20, 2008

EAGLE EYE - slick vacuous paranoid thriller

If you're staring at me, it better be because I'm the suspect. If not, get back to work or I swear you're all demoted to something that involves touching shit with your hands!EAGLE EYE is a very slick, not undiverting action movie with a plot to so ludicrous* you could stick a cherry on top and call it Sarah Palin. Two normal people, played by Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan, are plucked out of obscurity by a sinister female voice on the end of a cellphone who seems to be able to control any IT system in America. Naturally, the fuzz, in the form of Billy Bob Thornton and Rosario Dawson, are also chasing after our heros, in a movie that splices by NORTH BY NORTHWEST with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and ends up some way south of both of them. There are some flashy stunts and car chases and a suitably paranoid thriller element in which the very systems designed to keep us safe turn against it. As a basic guide, if you enjoyed WANTED or HITMAN you'll probably enjoy EAGLE EYE, but don't expect something of the same quality as DISTURBIA.

EAGLE EYE is on release in the US, Argentina, Australia, Chile, Hong Kong, Peru, Thailand, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, the Philippines, Venezuela, Belgium, Singapore, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Russia, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Turkey, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, South Korea, Austria, Estonia, Spain, Egypt, Indonesia, Kuwait, India, the UK and Japan. It opens next weekend in Iceland and Norway. It opens on December 24th in France and on January 2nd in Japan.

*Seriously. *SPOILER* Would an artificial intelligence so powerful it could control every network need to coerce two dumbass civilians anyways?

4 comments:

  1. Also *spoiler* a fair number of my friends can tell my twin bro and me apart on the phone, so how pants must said artificial intelligence's 'state-of-the-art' voice recognition software be to accept one twin as the other?! Otherwise, yeah it was an enjoyable enough way to spand a couple hours. ;)

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  2. I know I know. Completely pants and yet not as boring as, say, the 4 hour movie I just watched on Che Guevara!

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  3. Surprisingly, Eagle Eye beat the pants off of Quantum of Solace; goes to show ya, you can always depend on Spielberg...

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  4. Hey Media Boy - yes indeed, Eagle Eye actually is marginally better than QoS - though it isn't a Spielberg film!

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